The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) announced the launch of the $50 million Universal PatchinG and Remediation for Autonomous DEfense (UPGRADE) cybersecurity program designed to improve IT security for healthcare environments.
The UPGRADE platform will simulate hospital settings to detect weaknesses, automatically procure or develop patches, test them, and deploy solutions with minimal disruption to hospital operations.
The program aims to extend this security to entire systems and networks of medical devices, ensuring scalable and comprehensive protection.
The agency, established within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to drive high-risk, high-reward research in health and biomedical sciences, is spearheading the initiative under its Digital Health Security Initiative (DIGIHEALS), launched last summer to secure individual applications and devices.
The forthcoming solicitation for UPGRADE will invite proposals in four key areas: developing a vulnerability mitigation software platform, creating high-fidelity digital twins of hospital equipment, auto-detecting vulnerabilities, and auto-developing custom defenses.
The agency said multiple…
