Polyplexus™ - the Award-Winning Interdisciplinary Science R&D Platform - Will Host the ARPA-H Dash to Accelerate Health Outcomes

The online competition will use the platform to collect and identify bold ideas with the potential to transform health in the United States

NEW YORK, March 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Polyplexus (polyplexus.com) will host a national competition for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) (arpa-h.gov) to identify revolutionary, evidence-based ideas with the potential to transform health in the next 20 years. Cash prizes of up to $15,000 will be awarded to ideas that reach competition quarterfinals and beyond, as well as the chance for further development with ARPA-H Program Managers.

Called The ARPA-H Dash to Accelerate Health Outcomes (ARPA-H Dash), the online competition will use a bracket format and online discussion, debate, and voting to evaluate and narrow idea submissions and award winners from March 29 –May 16, 2023. It is open to visionary entrepreneurs, researchers, and clinicians across health, scientific, and technology communities and community advocates, policymakers, patients, and the general public.

"The parallels between the Polyplexus and ARPA-H missions are remarkable – we're both working to open up the future of innovation to a broader pool of contributors in order to surface, evaluate, refine, and then activate the ideas and talent that will have the greatest potential impact," said Michael Goldblatt, former head of the Defense Sciences Office and Polyplexus co-founder. "It is incredibly exciting to work with an organization that truly echoes the ethos of Polyplexus."

Polyplexus – initially funded by the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency – is spearheading a faster and more efficient interdisciplinary research and development process to accelerate solutions to big and emerging problems. The open social platform disrupts the standard research paradigm by connecting researchers beyond traditional siloes with sponsors looking for innovative talent and ideas.

ARPA-H aims to benefit the health of all Americans by investing in breakthrough science to reimagine essential areas of medicine and catalyze health breakthroughs that cannot readily be accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity. To do this, ARPA-H seeks new methods for applying a more streamlined awards process, enabling it to act quickly to pursue cutting-edge biomedical and health research.

Key ARPA-H Dash Facts and Dates:

• All competition activities occur on the ARPA-H Dash portal page on the Polyplexus platform at polyplexus.com/healthdash. Participants must create a free Polyplexus account to participate.
• The ARPA-H Dash will accept idea submissions via the Polyplexus competition portal page from March 29 – April 7, 2023.
• Sixty-four submissions will be selected by ARPA-H subject matter experts and organized into tournament-style brackets representing ARPA-H's four focus areas: Health Science Futures, Scalable Solutions, Proactive Health, and Resilient Systems. For details on the ARPA-H mission and focus areas, visit arpa-h.gov/research/.
• Brackets will be published at 8 am Eastern Standard Time on Monday, April 17, 2023, and the first round of head-to-head comparisons will be open for online discussion and voting.
• From April 17 – May 12, 2023, ideas will compete in head-to-head matchups, where they are debated and voted on by the Polyplexus community, with facilitation from ARPA-H Program Managers.
• The competition will conclude on May 16, 2023, with a prize awarded to the winning transformation, a runner-up, two semi-finalists, and four quarter-finalists, as determined by the judges. In addition, smaller prizes will also be awarded to voters based on the number of correct votes they contribute.

More on Polyplexus:

Polyplexus, recognized by Fast Company as a World Changing Idea, hosts an online community focused on exploring cross-disciplinary science questions. An open, global platform, Polyplexus accelerates access to scientific evidence, hypothesis development, research proposal generation, and sponsor engagement. Developed for scientific researchers, research sponsors, and the curious, Polyplexus reinvents the social platform by advancing evidence-based conversations, focusing the discussion through the lens of what we already know – in the pursuit of what we might discover. Become a member at Polyplexus.com.

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SOURCE Polyplexus