Announcing the winner of the Longitude Prize on AMR across the BBC
The Longitude Prize on AMR was an £8 million challenge prize run by Challenge Works and funded by Nesta and Innovate UK. Launched in 2014, it incentivised innovators around the world to develop rapid diagnostic tests to slow the spread of antibiotic resistant infections by providing doctors with a rapid and accurate alternative to the typical 2-3 day lab based test.
Antibiotic resistant infections kill nearly 2 million people every year and are on course to take 10 million lives annually by 2050 unless urgent solutions are found to slow the spread of superbugs. Better management and targeting of the antibiotics we have will help in this fight. Diagnostic tests will be key to helping clinicians in their decision making.
Following a decade of developments and entries from more than 250 teams around the world, the Longitude Prize named a winner in June 2024. The PA-100 AST System developed by Swedish company Sysmex Astrego can detect a bacterial urinary tract infection in 15 minutes and identify the right antibiotic to prescribe in 45 minutes. This will give clinicians the confidence to prescribe antibiotics only when necessary and to target the right treatment for each patient.
Our Approach
Having worked closely with Challenge Works for a decade on the Longitude Prize on AMR, Seven worked to secure a send-off the flagship prize so fittingly deserved.
Over many months in the lead up to the announcement we worked closely with the teams at the BBC’s One Show and at BBC News to produce engaging packages for their audiences and managed a coordinated international press campaign to ensure coverage in the UK and around the world.
Together with Challenge Works, we secured multiple high-profile spokespeople for the prize including Dame Sally Davies, former chief medical office of England and the UK’s special envoy on AMR. We worked closely with Antibiotic Research UK (ANTRUK) to ensure patient voices featured prominently in the campaign too.
The press release was tailored for multiple markets outside the UK, including the US and India, with relevant spokespeople for each market.
The Results
The winner announcement secured more than 725 pieces of coverage in the UK and around the world on TV, radio, online and in print, with an audience reach of 6.75B. An estimated 13.5M people read coverage online, 77M people heard about it on the radio, more than 10M people saw it on TV, and 4.6M people read about it in a newspaper.
The announcement of the winner was made exclusively on the One Show on BBC television, with a film about the winning test and a studio interview with Dame Sally Davies and Mike Read from Sysmex Astrego.
BBC News at 10 reported live from London’s Science museum in the evening, demonstrating the winning device live on air to millions more viewers across the UK.
This was followed by extensive reporting on national and regional BBC radio stations in the UK and around the world on the World Service, reports on BBC Breakfast, and reports and interviews on BBC World News TV.
The announcement was featured on BBC News online, and subsequently on the BBC’s Spanish and Turkish news services. BBC World Service coverage was also syndicated to multiple NPR stations in the USA.
In addition, we secured interviews with the winning team and with other prize competitors in the Financial Times, coverage about the global health aspect of the prize in The Guardian and an exclusive op-ed from Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and chair of the Longitude Prize committee in the New Scientist.