January 16, 2025 5pm London UK

Ariadna Tibau Martorell, MD PhD 

Over recent decades, significant advances have improved survival and quality of life for patients with cancer. However, the rise of therapies offering marginal benefits, often at increasing costs, has created a tension between the hope of new treatments and the reality of clinical and financial toxicities. This challenge is particularly acute in incurable cancer, placing a heavy burden on patients, families, and healthcare systems, underscoring the need for targeted improvements. This talk reviews initiatives aimed at addressing these challenges, focusing on identifying and prioritizing treatments that offer meaningful clinical benefits and genuine value to patients in modern oncology.

February 13, 2025 5pm London UK

Nick Woolley

Established research estimates that nearly 40% of UK cancer cases are preventable, through actions such as reducing tobacco use, reducing obesity and exposure to UV radiation.  The incidence of preventable cancers is also increasing over time – likely to reach 226,000 by 2040, up from 184,000 in 2023. Between 2023 to 2040 there will be a total of 3.7 million new preventable cancer cases. Reducing the number of people with preventable cancers would bring significant benefits for those individuals and their families, to the economy, and to wider society. Frontier Economics has undertaken a study (available at https://www.frontier-economics.com/uk/en/news-and-insights/news/news-article-i20141-cost-of-preventable-cancers-in-the-uk-to-rise) to estimate the social and economic cost of preventable cancers in the UK. In this talk, Nick Woolley will discuss:

the total annual cost of UK preventable cancer cases diagnosed each year and how this cost breaks down into the impact on individual, health care, social care, family and carers, and productivity. In discussion he will discuss which cancers are responsible for the highest costs and how might these costs grow up to 2040 based on current trends? How feasible would it be to prevent the cancers modelled and what might it cost to avoid more cancers? What policy changes would be necessary and would these be in line with current UK government/NHS thinking? How long would it take for results to be seen? This important webinar addresses the details of how the costs, in trillions, of not preventing cancers were estimated.