About

Substantial increases in funding of basic sciences, clinical research and translational research are having the desired result of expanding the pipeline of potentially valuable new medical technologies. The nation has yet to apply comparable focus to building an evidence base that will support informed adoption and use of these technologies.  As a result, health care decision makers (patients, clinicians, payers and purchasers) are often faced with difficult decisions concerning medical technology with limited information about its benefits, risks and costs. The absence of reliable information may impede adoption of high value technologies and/or promote overuse of low value or ineffective technologies. 

The Center for Medical Technology Policy (CMTP) is a private, non-profit organization that provides a neutral forum in which patients, clinicians, payers, manufacturers and researchers can work together to design and implement prospective, real world studies to inform health care decisions.  The primary goal of CMTP is to improve the process for generating reliable and credible information about the real world risks, benefits and costs of promising new medical technologies.

 Project Areas

 CMTP has a number of projects for addressing the evidence gaps for various technology topics including:

• Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research
  
• Think Tanks and Symposia
  
• Priority Setting
• Collaborative Research Projects
• Applied Policy Projects

Funding Sources

 To carry out these projects, CMTP receives funding from the following sources:

• Aetna
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 
• American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons
  
• Blue Shield of California Foundation
• California Healthcare Foundation
• The Commonwealth Fund
• Institute for Integrative Health
  
• Institute of Medicine
• Johnson & Johnson
• Kaiser Permanente
  
• Medicare Payment Advisory Commission
• National Cancer Institute
  
• National Pharmaceutical Council
• Pfizer
• QuantumLeap Healthcare Collaborative
• United Healthcare Foundation
• University of California, San Francisco