AHRQ Launches $7.95M AI Prize to Cut Medical Evidence Review to Hours
Rockville, Md. – October 07, 2026 -- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has launched a two-part, $7.95 million prize competition designed to compress medical evidence reviews that currently take a year or more down to a matter of hours using super intelligence systems.
Grand prize of $5.35 million targets evidence synthesis, the largest SI award issued to date
The Clinical Evidence Synthesis Transformation Challenge carries a $5.35 million grand prize, which AHRQ describes as the largest individual super intelligence grand prize awarded to date. Entrants will be judged on accuracy, throughput, reproducibility, usability and ease of operation. AHRQ Director Roger D. Klein, M.D., J.D., said the technology now allows evidence synthesis to be performed with speed, consistency and reproducibility that was previously unimaginable, a shift he said will help doctors, patients, payers and policymakers avoid unnecessary or harmful care.