The National Institutes of Health launched the RADx℠ Radical program to support innovative, non-traditional diagnostic approaches to address gaps in COVID-19 testing and surveillance. The program is expected to produce more efficient and effective ways to identify the current SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, as well as its variants, and to develop tools to detect and combat emerging infectious diseases. It will also promote other ways to help diagnose and monitor COVID-19, and it will use AI and other advanced techniques to build predictive models.