As the inaugural Chief Medical Officer and Acting Deputy Director at the federal biomedical research agency ARPA-H, Rafid Fadul, M.D., MBA, is focused on forging new pathways in medical AI, drug discovery, and biosecurity to transform clinical care. It’s a familiar road for the serial entrepreneur and clinician who hopes to inspire those around him with both “passion and obligation.”
“We’re trying to tackle things that government can tackle, that private sector can’t,” he says. “We do the impossible, and we do it fast.”
The impossible hardly intimidates Fadul. He helped found several companies before arriving at ARPA-H (the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health) in January 2026, including healthcare software firm Zivian Health. He earned his MBA from Johns Hopkins while finishing his residency in internal medicine at Georgetown, and led pulmonary and critical care during the pandemic at a health care system in Ohio. He also helped lead two companies through acquisitions — including Community Intensivists, acquired by HNI Healthcare in 2018 — all before landing at the federal agency. At ARPA-H, his list is no less intrepid, including shepherding the agency towards developing a system that can “deliver care at scale at high quality.” It’s a topic he’ll discuss live at DOC 2026.
AI underlies many of these endeavors, from accelerating drug discovery to uncovering new care delivery models. One of ARPA-H’s current studies involves agentic AI and how it might optimize care for Americans facing heart failure. Fadul believes this is the role the agency can, and should, forge: advancing a new technology through regulatory approvals to clear a path for the private sector.
“This is nothing a VC will get behind because there are regulatory issues associated with this,” he says. “But we will take that risk, and we will put ourselves out there so that others will follow.”
Fadul earned his M.D. from George Washington University and is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, and critical care. His articles, presentations, and studies have been published in multiple publications, including The New England Journal of Medicine.
In addition to co-founding and serving as Chief Medical Officer at Zivian Health, a role he left for ARPA-H, he served as the founding Chief Medical Officer at digital healthcare company Wheel Health, leading it from the seed stage to Series B, was the former director of pulmonary and critical care medicine for Ohio’s Blanchard Valley Health System, and was the Chief Medical Advisor for precision health management firm Cenegetics. He also served as Director of Pulmonary Medicine at the Blanchard Valley Health System in Findlay, Ohio, treating patients during the pandemic.
We are thrilled Dr. Fadul is joining our DOC 2026 Faculty. Please join us in welcoming him to the community.