About - CIMIT MAIN
About CIMIT
Accelerating Healthcare Innovation
CIMIT is a network of world-class academic and medical institutions partnering with industry and government. Our mission is to foster collaboration among clinicians, technologists, and entrepreneurs to accelerate innovation and catalyze the discovery, development, and implementation of innovative healthcare technologies.
Our History
CIMIT was formed in 1998 as a “center without walls,” linking four leading academic research centers in the greater Boston area. It now includes 13 of Boston’s strongest academic medical centers, universities, and a growing network of national and international affiliates. Starting from a foundation in medical devices, diagnostics, and procedures, the scope has grown to address the full spectrum of medical innovation including e-health, drugs, and biologics. From the start, CIMIT recognized that sophisticated innovation methods and technologies developed for nonmedical use could be applied to unmet medical needs. In addition, we observed that early stage, multidisciplinary translational projects often have little chance of securing funding from conventional sources. In response, we focused on the often unrecognized and undervalued act of facilitating early stage collaboration between multi-disciplinary and institutional teams to increase the potential for significant near-term clinical impact.
What we do and how we do it...
We have created a successful model for accelerating translational medical research, devices, procedures, and clinical systems by working together with clinicians, scientists, researchers, and engineers to identify gaps, areas of unmet need, and the innovative ideas to address those gaps. We then facilitate collaboration across institutions and with companies, foundations, and those invested new medical techologies to quickly push forward these leading-edge ideas to where they will directly impact patient care.
Long-term Commitment to Dual-Benefit Innovations with the DoD
Since its founding, CIMIT has had a highly productive relationship with the US Department of Defense, sharing the mission to address the healthcare needs of warfighters as well as civilians resulting in dual-benefit solutions. Much of CIMIT's early, and part of its ongoing, funding has been from the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.