Taxonomy of Accelerated Coverage Pathways for Innovation (ACPIs)

There are a variety of mechanisms to bring medical technology innovations to the market. Accelerated Coverage Pathways for Innovation (ACPI) are one of them. Accelerated Coverage Pathways for Innovation can be defined as bi-lateral (e.g. payer & manufacturer) or multi-lateral (e.g. payer, provider, manufacturer) agreements that provide temporary coverage and/or funding to enable patient access to specific conditions outside the general reimbursement and funding frameworks.

A few years ago MedTech Europe undertook a project to map and classify these funding mechanisms for medical technology innovations by initially calling them innovative payment schemes (IPSs) and a few years later, Value Based Access Programs (VBAPs).

However, as these funding mechanisms are rapidly evolving, MedTech Europe decided mid-2020 to commission AliraHealth to update its initial findings. This project led, in 2021, to an updated version of the matrix in which 26 European ACPIs dedicated to medical technologies have been classified according to how they address specific types of uncertainty from the payers’ perspective, namely the uncertainty about the clinical outcomes and the uncertainty about the economic outcomes.