The Device Data Problem Every ARPA-H ADVOCATE Team Will Face

ARPA-H's ADVOCATE program is one of the most exciting things to happen in cardiovascular health in years. The goal is straightforward and enormous: build AI agents capable of transforming how we detect, monitor, and treat heart disease, and then deploy them at scale across real health systems with real patients.

TA1 teams are racing toward their February 27 Solution Summary deadline right now. They're thinking about AI architectures, clinical validation strategies, and EHR integration pathways. Most of them will hit the same wall at some point: where does the device data come from?

The Data Problem Nobody Talks About

ADVOCATE's TA1 technical requirements include continuous data streams from wearables and medical devices: blood pressure, heart rate, activity, body weight, blood oxygen, and continuous glucose. These aren't nice-to-haves. They're the fuel for the cardiovascular AI agent the program is designed to build.

The challenge is that patients don't own one device. They own many. Different manufacturers. Different data formats. Different APIs. Different regulatory classifications. A single TA1 team could easily need to support a dozen or more device types just to achieve meaningful coverage.

Building that connectivity from scratch is a multi-year engineering project. We know, because we spent years doing exactly that.

What Device Connectivity Actually Requires

Every device integration involves the same categories of work that most AI teams underestimate:

Device authentication and pairing. Data normalization across manufacturers. Handling firmware updates that break existing integrations. Managing platform changes from Apple, Google, Fitbit, and Garmin. Maintaining FHIR compliance as standards evolve. Navigating HIPAA and data use agreements with device manufacturers. Supporting patients who switch devices mid-study.

None of this is impossible. But all of it takes time, and time is the one thing TA1 teams don't have.

The Smarter Path

At Validic, we've spent over a decade solving exactly these problems. Our Inform API connects to over 700 wearables and medical devices, normalizes every data point into a consistent schema, and streams it in real time to your pipeline. FHIR mapping is available through the Inform Push Service for teams that need data aligned with clinical flowsheets. One integration. Every device your patients own.

TA1 teams that partner with Validic can go from zero device connectivity to a production-ready data pipeline in weeks, not quarters. That's time better spent on the actual cardiovascular AI the program is funding.

What This Means for ADVOCATE

The Solution Summary deadline is February 27. The Full Proposal is April 1. Teams that identify their device connectivity partner now can focus their proposal narrative on what matters: the AI architecture, the clinical approach, and the path to scaled deployment.

If you're building toward ADVOCATE, we'd like to talk.

Visit https://www.validic.com/how-we-help/arpa-h-advocate or reach out at hello@validic.com.