Washington, D.C. – The Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) today issued a new policy statement underscoring its support for the Cancer Cure Moonshot Initiative and highlighting the integral role of medical imaging in treating and curing cancer. MITA also offers suggestions for how medical imaging should fit into the initiative.

“We commend Vice President Biden for spearheading this transformative initiative that may completely change the way we diagnose, treat and ultimately cure cancer,” said Patrick Hope, Executive Director of MITA. “We are confident that National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other grants will help provide the resources and financial support needed to continue to develop the next generation of technologies that will bring us closer to the cure.”

In the policy statement, MITA offers the following three suggestions for how medical imaging should fit into the Moonshot Initiative:
· Advancing innovative, cutting edge medical imaging technologies: We need to build on the significant advancements that have allowed imaging to go beyond simply viewing anatomy to now being able to study pathophysiology and encourage new discoveries.

· Driving new applications of existing technologies: We hope medical imaging will be able to screen for more cancers; be value additive to in vitro diagnostics; discern more accurately between aggressive and non-aggressive cancers; optimize therapy decision-making; facilitate minimally invasive treatments; identify side effects; monitor treatment in real time and predict treatment outcomes earlier.

· Improving imaging data infrastructure and analytics: We must create an interoperable system for accessing and evaluating the rich data contained in the billions of medical images stored on servers all around the world.

Cancer care is one of the clinical areas that has benefited most from medical imaging technology. Ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), positron emission tomography/computerized tomography (PET/CT), and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) are invaluable technologies used in the screening, diagnosis, staging, surveillance and therapy monitoring of cancers.

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The Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA), a division of NEMA, is the collective voice of medical imaging equipment, radiation therapy and radiopharmaceutical manufacturers, innovators and product developers. It represents companies whose sales comprise more than 90 percent of the global market for advanced medical imaging technology. For more information, visit www.medicalimaging.org. Follow MITA on Twitter @MITAToday.

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