AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School will help develop clinical-trial sites and a national research data system under a new federal effort announced Wednesday in downtown Austin by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort, called SURPASS, is intended to use computational tools, real-time data and automation to improve how researchers test drugs and biologic medicines. HHS says clinical development can take a decade or more, cost as much as $2 billion and fail more than 90% of the time. The initiative is being organized through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H. Its director, Alicia Jackson, said the agency aims to reduce development costs, while Kennedy argued that artificial intelligence could help identify ineffective or unsafe treatments earlier. Those goals are plans, not demonstrated results; the program’s impact will depend on how its methods perform in research and whether they preserve rigorous safety protections. UT’s Dell Medical School will be the academic partner for two related projects. STACK is intended to expand the number of domestic clinical-trial sites and improve enrollment. COMMONS will develop shared data infrastructure, with safeguards governing access and permissions. A third project, CINCH, is focused on helping patients navigate care and participate in research. Evidence Health, a company specializing in consent and health-data governance systems, will work with Dell Medical School on the two projects. The company received awards of up to $49.9 million for COMMONS and up to $16.33 million for STACK; the announcement did not say those amounts would go directly to UT. Dr. Claudia Lucchinetti, UT’s executive vice president for medical affairs and dean of Dell Medical School, said the projects are intended to connect patients with appropriate trials, bring participation closer to home and use real-world and digital information to better understand which treatments work for whom. The proposal drew a measured welcome from Dr. Andy Silverman, who leads Catawba Research and 3A Research in the Austin area. He said researchers share the desire to shorten trials, but emphasized that the time required to establish a medicine’s safety serves an essential purpose. He cited the need for one to three years of safety data and cautioned against relying too heavily on artificial intelligence or other emerging technology without sufficient FDA staffing and expertise. Federal officials said they want the United States to compete more effectively with countries including China and Australia in clinical research. ARPA-H is seeking formal proposals from companies working in statistics, artificial intelligence and trial design by January 2027.