2007 NIO Special Project - Fund Raising Campaign
A Report on the Global and U.S. Economic Burden of
Neurological Diseases and Psychiatric Illnesses
Written by the Harvard School of Public Health
Sponsored by the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO)
Proposal. Raise $2M to support the research, writing and publication of a 200-page report on the Global and National Economic Burden of Neurological Diseases and Psychiatric Illnesses.
**Please contact Zack Lynch, Executive Director, if you are interested in supporting this specific project.**
Goal. To obtain credible data about the economic consequences of brain diseases for the purpose of persuading Congress to increase funding for neurotechnology including: translational neurotechnology research, tax incentives for neurotech investment, and a host of other purposes in support of NIO's mission to accelerate the development of treatments and cures for brain diseases.
Clear, credible, and economic data will allow our legislators to make intelligent trade-offs when determining budget priorities. Only by "dollarizing" the impact of these illnesses will it become undeniably clear the profound problem brain diseases represent to our economy, especially with our growing and aging population.
Report Overview. The report would calculate the economic burden for specific illnesses including Alzheimer's disease, addiction, anxiety, attention disorders, depression, epilepsy, hearing loss, insomnia, chronic pain, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, stroke and a few other brain-related illnesses. The report would determine the total economic burden for both the US and world and would include future projections based on varying technological scenarios.
Report Cost Drivers. The key question the report will need to answer is what do we mean by economic burden, and how do we calculate it? There are three components to this type of analysis:
1. Prevalence, disability, mortality and DALYs lost. This is the standard components of the global burden of disease. There are well-established methodologies to undertake this.
2. Expenditure in health systems on interventions for neurological and psychiatric conditions. This information is much harder to find given present data and will likely require considerable data collation or collection efforts.
3. Lost economic output due to these conditions. The problem with these calculations is that they are the results of either (1) times some constant (a little more complicated but you get the idea) or (2) require panel data. There is much more methodological debate about how to do this well relative to the other two.
Unlike other medical technologies that generally result in someone surviving or passing away (e.g. cancer, heart attack), many neurotechnologies (e.g. drugs for schizophrenia) improve the quality of life across a continuum of disability (e.g. some people will return to be high functioning members of society - no economic burden, while others improve sufficiently only to be less than totally disabled - high economic burden).
Thus, the economic impact of a neurotechnology is dependent upon the how advanced a particular treatment is for each disease. A cure could equate to a low long-term economic burden (but perhaps a high short term cost depending on the price of the treatment), while a drug that improves the quality of life for six months (e.g. current treatments for Alzheimer's) would shave only a tiny amount of the economic burden - high economic cost.
This report will generate obtain very powerful metrics about the near term economic burden (0-10 years) given some assumptions of neurotechnologies in the clinical pipeline, however because of the econometric complexity medium and long term estimates will need to be analyzed in a scenario framework with different technological assumptions. This differential analysis will play an important role in showing how different levels of investment could impact treatment development and overall economic burden.
Legislative Impact.
• Increase funding for brain related diseases by $1 billion over the next five years
• Develop tax incentives that result in an additional $1 billion dollars of venture investment flowing into small innovation neurotech startups in the next five years
According to NeuroInsights, annual U.S. government support for the neurosciences across all institutes at the NIH is around $5 billion while total venture investment in neurotech in 2005 rose to a little more $1.5 billion. In this light, it become clear that the billion dollar increases suggested above are within reason, especially when annualized over five years.
With the economic burden of Alzheimer's disease alone in the United States surpassing $100 billion a year, the potential payoff of making the decision to increase funding and incentivize investment seems quite rational. Moreover, since preliminary research estimates that the global economic burden far exceeds $1 trillion, it will be possible to make a convincing case to
Bottom Line: The aforementioned policy changes will not occur until we have "clear, credible, and dollarized" information available to legislators to help them make intelligent decisions. In short, we must dollarize in order to help us prioritize.
Addendum
Research Lead
Christopher Murray, PhD, MD
Director of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health; Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies; Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Policy;
Department of Population and International Health
Christopher Murray is the Director of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health and the former Executive Director of the Evidence and Information for Policy Cluster at the World Health Organization. A physician and health economist, his early work focused on tuberculosis control and the development of the pioneering Global Burden of Disease project at Harvard University. Recently, he has initiated major new approaches to the measurement of population health, cost-effectiveness analysis and the conceptualization, measurement and national application of health systems performance assessment. He has authored or edited seven books, many book chapters and more than 90 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed publications.
Industry Lead
Zack Lynch, Founder, Executive Director, Neurotechnology Industry Organization
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