Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, CVS Health’s Dr. David Fairchild and the Hasso Plattner Institute’s Dr. Ariel Stern will help steer Atman through FDA to fully autonomous deployment in clinical care

BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Atman Health today announced the formation of its Strategic Advisory Board to guide the company as it builds AI-driven autonomous cardiovascular care and prepares its system for review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The board’s founding members are Robert Califf, MD, a cardiologist and clinical trialist who founded the Duke Clinical Research Institute and twice served as FDA commissioner; David Fairchild, MD, senior vice president and chief medical officer of retail health at CVS Health; and Ariel Stern, PhD, professor of digital health, economics and policy at the Hasso Plattner Institute and adjunct professor in the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, whose research examines how regulation and payment shape innovation in medical technology.

Atman is developing its system under the ADVOCATE program of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), beginning with heart failure. Large language models interpret records and handle patient conversations, while clinical decisions are made by a deterministic engine that applies explicit, cardiologist-written criteria and records the reasoning behind each recommendation. Atman is targeting a De Novo submission to the FDA within the program’s first 24 months.

“Heart failure has some of the strongest evidence in medicine, yet most patients still do not receive its full benefit,” said Califf. “AI can help close that gap only if it is held to the standard we expect of any medical intervention: rigorous evidence, reasoning clinicians can inspect and continued monitoring once it is in use. Atman is building to that standard from the start.”

“Most of the expertise needed to manage heart failure well is already established, yet it still has to be reapplied by clinicians, one patient and one visit at a time,” said Calum MacRae, MD, PhD, a cardiologist and co-founder of Atman Health. “Encoding that expertise explicitly makes it consistent, open to inspection and possible to improve. But an autonomous system also has to earn permission three times: from the regulators who authorize it, the organizations that deliver care and the policies that pay for it. This board brings deep experience in all three areas and is shaping the system while it is still being built.”

“Specialist care for heart failure is still organized around the cardiologist’s office, and many patients cannot get there as often as their treatment requires,” said Fairchild. “The opportunity is to bring specialist-level management to wherever patients receive care, in a way that fits how clinicians and care teams actually work.”

“Digital health innovations rarely fail on technology alone. They stall when evidence, regulation and payment do not line up,” said Stern. “Payment is starting to move. Medicare’s new ACCESS model pays for chronic care based on whether patients reach their health goals rather than on visits, and fixed payments for outcomes reward care that is continuous and efficient at scale. That is where autonomous systems have a natural advantage, and Atman is building from inception for evidence, regulation and payment together.”

Members of the Strategic Advisory Board serve in an individual capacity. Affiliations are listed for identification only.

About Atman Health

Atman Health is reimagining cardiovascular care with AI and automation. Its platform pairs large language models for data interpretation and patient conversations with a transparent, deterministic decision engine for making clinical decisions. Atman works with provider groups and health plans and is backed by Khosla Ventures and iSelect Fund. More information is available at atmanhealth.com.

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SOURCE Atman Health, Inc.