TOPx HHS Tech Sprint for AI and Invisible Illness (2026)

TOPx HHS Tech Sprint for AI and Invisible Illness (2026)

The TOPx HHS Tech Sprint for AI and Invisible Illness is an active 2026 national prize competition led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) LymeX Innovation Accelerator, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health and the Federal Chief Data Officers Council. It asks participants to use U.S. Open Data, artificial intelligence, and lived experience to build practical tools for health problems that are difficult to measure or are often missed in routine care.

The competition has two phases. Team Mobilization, the concept and selection phase, opened on May 29, 2026 and closed on July 15, 2026. The current phase is the TOPx Sprint, or Phase 2. It opened on July 29, 2026 and accepts final sprint submissions until October 15, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Phase 2 is for teams advancing from Phase 1, so a person who did not participate in the earlier team-selection process should not assume that registering on the platform creates a new route into the sprint.

This is a prize competition rather than a grant. The federal sponsors describe the goal as producing functional minimum viable products, demonstrations, and other usable tools within the sprint period. Participants keep ownership of the intellectual property they create, while the official rules give HHS and its operating divisions specified nonexclusive licenses for the submitted solution.

Key details

What the sprint is trying to produce

The challenge is built around a practical data problem. Federal health data is spread across agencies and systems, while patients and care teams often face fragmented signals, delayed diagnosis, and incomplete measures of illness burden. The official challenge asks participants to connect those signals into tools that can improve detection, care, decision-making, or understanding of impact.

Participants may work with datasets available through Data.gov and HHS Open Data on HealthData.gov. The NIH announcement also identifies interoperability resources and frameworks that teams may build upon, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Interoperability Framework, USCDI+, HL7 FHIR, TEFCA, and Blue Button 2.0. These references do not mean that every entry must implement each framework. They show the type of data exchange, patient access, and standards-aware work the sponsors consider relevant.

The three challenge areas give applicants a defined way to focus a proposal:

1. Lyme Innovation addresses earlier detection, faster diagnosis, and better coordination of care for preventable tickborne infection.
2. Invisible Illness addresses the measurement, diagnosis, and care of illnesses that may not be readily apparent, including complex chronic conditions that disproportionately affect women while affecting people more broadly.
3. Cost of Illness addresses the human and economic burden carried by patients and families and asks how data can make that burden measurable.

A proposal does not need to cover all three areas. The Phase 2 submission should fit one area and make the intended user and real-world workflow easy to understand. The official page names patients, clinicians, caregivers, decision-makers, entrepreneurs, researchers, technologists, and communities as part of the wider ecosystem. A strong entry can therefore be technical, clinical, operational, or patient-facing, provided it delivers a credible working result.

Prize structure

The total cash prize pool is up to $2,000,000. The official breakdown is:

• one grand prize of $1,000,000;
• three first-place prizes of $200,000 each, one for each challenge area;
• three second-place prizes of $50,000 each, one for each challenge area;
• 15 impact awards of $15,000 each; and
• five People’s Choice prizes of $5,000 each.

The sponsors may also provide non-monetary recognition such as honorable mentions. Cash prizes are awarded only at the conclusion of Phase 2. The announcement says that funding may come through both HHS and NIH, and that payments may be subject to federal tax reporting and withholding rules.

The challenge is authorized under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, 15 U.S.C. § 3719. This authority matters because the money is awarded as prize funding for innovation, not as financial assistance under a grant program. HHS and NIH also reserve the right to change, suspend, cancel, or decline to award prizes if the rules allow it or if no submission is judged worthy.

Eligibility

The official eligibility rules are more specific than the earlier page suggested. An individual participant must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and at least 18 years old at the time of submission. A private entity must be incorporated in the United States and maintain its primary place of business there. Participants may register as individuals, teams, or entities, but the registration used for the challenge also determines how any prize payment is handled.

Federal entities and federal employees acting within the scope of their employment are excluded. HHS employees may not participate in a personal capacity under the stated rules. Challenge judges and parties involved with the design, production, execution, or distribution of the challenge, along with specified immediate family members, are also excluded. A federal employee from an agency other than HHS should consult an agency ethics official before participating or accepting a prize.

There is an additional funding restriction. Participants may not use federal funds from a grant award or cooperative agreement to develop a submission or support submission work. Federal contractors may not use federal contract funds for those activities either. Teams should document their funding source before building the final entry, especially when an existing research or public-sector project is being adapted.

The rules also require compliance with the challenge announcement, registration instructions, applicable law, and the platform’s requirements. A winning participant must complete the requested verification and payment documents. A team should settle internal ownership and payment arrangements before submitting because HHS pays a winning team’s prize to the eligible Team Leader and does not arbitrate how that person distributes it among members.

How to apply for the current phase

Phase 1 is closed. The steps below describe the active Phase 2 route for teams that advanced from Team Mobilization:

1. Create or use an account on the official challenge platform at InvisibleIllness.Crowdicity.com and select Register.
2. Complete the required HHS Challenge Participant Registration Form. The NIH announcement says this form is mandatory for both Phase 1 and Phase 2 and is used to verify eligibility and enable prize payment.
3. Choose the challenge area that matches the team’s work: Lyme Innovation, Invisible Illness, or Cost of Illness.
4. Submit the Phase 2 entry through the challenge platform by October 15, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET, following the platform’s on-site instructions.

The required Phase 2 content is not just an idea statement. The entry must demonstrate the solution the team built. The official acceptable formats include a user-facing application such as a web app, mobile app, dashboard, or interactive interface; a data or AI solution such as a model, algorithm, analytics pipeline, or scoring engine; an interactive visualization tool; or a backend or integration tool such as an API, data pipeline, system integration, or interoperability solution.

The submission should include a solution overview and MVP demonstration, with a live demo, prototype, or working product. It must identify the target users and explain how the solution fits a real-world workflow, in a section capped at 250 words. It must explain the data, technology, and evidence-driven approach, including how open data or other data sources are used, in a section capped at 300 words. It must show the value delivered through improved insight, decision-making, care coordination, efficiency, or return on investment, in a section capped at 250 words. Finally, it must explain deployment, scaling, reuse, key assumptions, and next steps, in a section capped at 250 words.

Before submitting, teams should confirm that the demo works for someone outside the build team, that each data source is named, and that the claims match what the prototype can actually show. A health-related tool should also explain limitations, false-positive or false-negative risks, privacy handling, and the point at which a human must review an output. These are practical preparation steps rather than substitutes for the official platform instructions.

Timeline and current status

The official timeline records the following sequence:

• Team Mobilization Phase 1 opened on May 29, 2026 and closed on July 15, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET.
• Phase 1 winners were selected and invited to the full sprint in July 2026.
• Phase 2 opened on July 29, 2026.
• TOPx demos and a solutions showcase are planned for September 2026 at an HHS LymeX event.
• Phase 2 submissions close on October 15, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET.
• People’s Choice voting is planned for October and November 2026.
• Winning teams are expected to be selected, notified, and publicly announced in late 2026.

HHS reserves the right to revise, extend, or otherwise adjust milestone dates. The page currently presents Phase 2 as open, so this record should be treated as a live opportunity for the eligible advancing teams rather than an archive entry. If the official page changes the deadline or closes registration, recheck this listing before relying on it.

How submissions are judged

Both phases use four equally weighted criteria on a 20-point scale. The criteria are Results for the American People; Data, Tech & Evidence-Driven Innovation; Execution, Efficiency & Delivery; and Scalability, Reuse & Societal Impact. In Phase 2, the official announcement places greater emphasis on demonstrated performance, execution, and real-world applicability because the review concerns a final MVP rather than a concept alone.

The evaluators look for a meaningful public benefit, responsible use of U.S. Open Data or AI, a realistic path to near-term deployment, and potential for adaptation across conditions, populations, agencies, or national health and policy settings. The review may also consider participant collaboration, activity on the challenge platform, public engagement, People’s Choice voting, federal priorities, interoperability goals, and compliance with the rules.

The rubric rewards specificity. A team should name the person or organization that will use its tool, show the decision or workflow being improved, and demonstrate the output with representative data. A polished interface without a clear user need may score poorly. Conversely, a modest tool can be competitive if it turns a real data gap into a reliable, understandable result and shows how that result could be used.

Ownership, data, and responsible participation

Participants retain full ownership of the tools and intellectual property they create. Participation nevertheless grants HHS and its operating divisions, including NIH, a nonexclusive, paid-up, royalty-free worldwide license to reproduce, publish, post, link to, share, and display the submission. The rules also grant the federal government a nonexclusive license to practice the solution. Teams should read those terms carefully and ensure that they have rights to every component, dataset, model, image, and code dependency included in the submission.

Open data is not the same as unrestricted clinical evidence. A team should record the source, license, update date, known limitations, and intended use of each dataset. Personal or protected health information should not be added casually to a public demo. Where a model produces a health-related signal, the entry should make clear whether it is an administrative, research, navigation, or decision-support tool and should not present an unvalidated output as a diagnosis or treatment recommendation.

The official challenge page also emphasizes lived experience and patient-centered work. Teams can reflect that requirement through interviews, documented user testing, advisory input, accessible design, or a transparent explanation of whose needs shaped the product. The most useful submission package will connect the data method to a concrete human problem and show what changes for the intended user.

Official links

• NIH official challenge announcement, including the current Phase 2 deadline, prize breakdown, rules, and submission requirements.
• TOPx challenge platform, where eligible participants create an account and submit through the on-site workflow.
• HHS Challenge Participant Registration Form, required for Phase 1 and Phase 2 participation.
• LymeX official program hub, which identifies the HHS-led TOPx initiative and its relationship to the Lyme Innovation Accelerator.

For the current 2026 cycle, the key action is to confirm Phase 2 eligibility, complete the HHS registration requirement, prepare a working demonstration, and submit through the platform before October 15, 2026 at 11:59 PM ET. The date in this listing is the Phase 2 final-submission deadline published by NIH; the platform and NIH page remain the authority if HHS revises the schedule.