Health economics: What’s the price of a breakthrough?

The Thinking Policy podcast discusses the Longitude Prize for ALS, a five-year, £7.5m multi-stage programme run by Challenge Works (part of Nesta) to use AI and large-scale omics data from five international data owners to identify and validate novel therapeutic targets, addressing repeated clinical trial failures and historic underinvestment in ALS. Caroline Parslow explains the prize structure, current 20 discovery teams (70 organisations), timelines (first findings by December 2026; winner January 2031), and the aim to build an ecosystem and involve people living with ALS through a patient advisory group. Amanda Cole from the Office of Health Economics outlines research across seven markets estimating ALS burden (UK patients lose ~12.5 QALYs; ~£880k lost health per patient; NHS costs ~£26k per patient-year) and modelling the commercial case using three valuation approaches, with estimates ranging from $41bn to $142bn and key methodological challenges in health technology assessment. https://challengeworks.org/longitude-prize/ https://www.ohe.org/ Running Order: 00:00 Welcome and ALS Focus 02:55 Longitude Prize Explained 04:56 How the Prize Works 08:31 Why ALS Funding Is Hard 11:28 Prize Timeline Next Steps 13:35 OHE Commercial Case 14:47 Measuring Burden and Costs 18:32 Valuation Methods and Results 21:40 HTA Challenges and Caveats 28:13 Beyond ALS Wider Momentum 30:50 Economist Debrief QALYs 33:24 Using Ranges for Decisions 41:45 Long-Term Benefits and Wrap 43:42 Final Thanks and Outro