The Problem 

• Autistic people bring diverse strengths, perspectives, and experiences to their families and communities, while often having widely varying health and support needs. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex condition that science has yet to deeply understand, leaving many individuals and families without the support they need to thrive.
• Autistic people experience disproportionately high rates of co-occurring health conditions, including gastrointestinal and sleep disorders, as well as disparities in employment and life expectancy. Too often, individuals and families lack access to the individualized assessment, treatment, and support needed to address these challenges.
• Diagnosis usually comes only after developmental differences are observable, which delays access to care. People diagnosed with ASD also differ substantially in developmental trajectory, co-occurring conditions, environmental exposures, genetic predisposition, and response to treatment—so treatment outcomes vary significantly across individuals.
• Current diagnostic and treatment paradigms rely primarily on costly, time-intensive behavioral observation and one-size-fits-all interventions from specialists with limited availability in much of the country. Research has also not sufficiently explored promising objective, multi-factor measures or the modifiable drivers of health and functional outcomes.  

The Solution 

• The SPECTRA (Systems for Phenotypic Evaluation, Causal Trajectories, Response, and Agency) program takes a bold approach, anchoring autism research in objective, multi-factor measurement and computation rather than behavioral observation alone.
• The program is built on the hypothesis that nonlinear interactions among genetic, environmental, family, metabolic, immune, microbiome, and developmental factors shape distinct developmental, health, communication, and functional trajectories.
• By integrating these data across the lifespan, SPECTRA aims to build tools that serve two connected goals: improving quality of life, independence and autonomy for people diagnosed with ASD, and improving assessment so that measurement becomes continuous, real-world, and a natural part of everyday life. Together, these tools will help match individuals to tailored interventions most likely to help and enable continuous improvement of care and outcomes overtime. 

Only ARPA-H can... 

• Bring together the diverse range of capabilities needed to tackle this challenge, uniting experts across disciplines, institutions, and industry sectors around a common goal.
• Convene stakeholders within scientific fields and across education, pediatrics, and advocacy organizations, and co-design solutions with autistic people and their families so that tools are grounded in lived experience, accessible, and ready for integration in medical, school, home, and community settings. 

• De-risk new platforms technologies academia and industry can leverage to develop solutions now and into the future. 

  TA 4 - Enabling Technologies: Accessible tools for communication, quality of life, and embedded assessment that measure real-world function as a byproduct of ordinary use  

Solution Summary Due: A Solution Summary is required to move forward with this opportunity. Due date varies by technical area.

• TA 4: October 18, 2026 (5:00PM ET) 
  Accepting submissions starting October 4, 2026