As the Longitude Prize on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) shows, it pays to reward ideas

Our year is punctuated by award ceremonies that are all inherently backward-looking. The Oscars, The Booker Prize, The Nobels all celebrate and rewarding past achievements.

Which is why it’s both refreshing and important to not only recognise past successes but incentivise future ones – which is exactly what challenge prizes do.

The idea is simple: a challenge is selected – with a clear-cut target – and a jackpot is offered to whoever first reaches that goal.

By opening the field to the widest possible pool of inventors – Nobel laureates and mavericks alike – it can inspire myriad potential solutions to a problem.

Challenge prizes also attract investments from competitors which, when combined, can far exceed the prize money that is on offer.  The also raise the profile of, and have the power to solve, some of the most pressing problems of the time.

Consider the original Longitude Prize, which was launched in 1714 to solve the greatest scientific challenge of that century – how to effectively measure longitude at sea. Many ships had foundered without the ability to do this and the Government established a prize fund of £20,000 (several million in today’s money) to reward the person who could solve the problem.

The challenge, which was overseen by the Board of Longitude, was met by Yorkshire watchmaker and carpenter John Harrison for his chronometer. One of the triumphs of 18th‐century technology, this seafaring clock led to safer shipping and opened up global trade routes.

As someone who, in 2014, had held three of the eight posts represented on the original Board of Longitude, it seemed appropriate to commemorate the tercentenary of the launch of the Longitude Prize, and I suggested an “anniversary” prize to address a current challenge.

A shortlist of six topics was created – each representing one of the biggest scientific challenges of our era.

The winning choice was to design a test that could cheaply and quickly identify whether a person’s disease was bacterial or viral and thereby avoid the prescription of unnecessary antibiotics – one of the main drivers of antibiotic resistance.

It is thrilling that now, a decade after the Longitude Prize on AMR was launched, the winner has been announced.

The inventor of the rapid test for urinary tract infections has been awarded £8 million but they won’t be the only winner. If their invention improves the treatment of these infections and helps stem the rising tide of antibiotic resistance, it is society that will be the real winner.

Lord Martin Rees has written a longer form article in the New Scientist. This is in print in the 22^nd June edition.