Fast Assessment of Solutions, Therapeutics, Pharmaceuticals, and SupplieS (FASTPASS) Innovative Solutions Opening

The FASTPASS program aims to develop and demonstrate a near real-time, non-destructive, through-packaging, AI/ML-enabled testing and quality monitoring system for pharmaceutical products and their inputs. The program is structured around two technical areas: TA1 for next-generation, fieldable sensing technologies (e.g., nuclear magnetic/quadrupole resonance, spatially offset Raman spectroscopy, time-domain terahertz spectroscopy, x-ray fluorescence, x-ray diffraction, hyperspectral approaches) and TA2 for computational models and integrated system software that can interpret weak, noisy, heterogeneous signals under real-world conditions. The program is divided into three 18-month phases, with performers evaluated through increasingly realistic demonstrations, moving from component-level performance to rugged, transportable prototypes capable of rapid screening with extremely low false-alarm rates. The system must be able to screen pharmaceutical products through six major packaging types: boxes of liquid vials or syringes, bottles of solid oral dosage forms, boxes of lyophilized vials, boxed blister packs, boxed liquid solutions in bags, and barrels of bulk powdered ingredients. The goal is to enable rapid, mobile, field-deployable screening at import points of entry and other critical supply-chain nodes.