Should a life-saving, but expensive, cancer drug be made available on the NHS even though it only benefits very few people? Or should the money be allocated to drugs that lower blood pressure, which help vast swathes of the population? For the final episode of this season, we spoke to Joe Hilton, a health economist, to understand more about how difficult decisions like this one are made. 

Joe is a research fellow in mathematical modelling at the Manchester Centre for Health Economics and a 2025 JUNIPER Fellow. JUNIPER is a network of researchers across the UK working to prepare the country for the public health challenges of the future. We spoke to Joe at JUNIPER’s annual meeting to understand more about the role of maths and economics in healthcare. He also talked us through his path into this job and what it was like going into research into health policy in 2020 at the very start of the pandemic! 

To find out more about the mathematics of health, you might enjoy:

• This article about about how mathematical models are used in epidemiology
• An exploration of how you can use maths to understand disease spread in a hospital
• Another podcast on how modellers work between maths and medicine

Maths on the Move, is the podcast from plus.maths.org. We speak to researchers from the frontiers of mathematical science so you can connect with the maths that shapes and explains our world. Hosted by Plus editors Rachel Thomas and Marianne Freiberger.

This podcast is part of our collaboration with JUNIPER, the Joint UNIversities Pandemic and Epidemiological Research network. JUNIPER is a collaborative network of researchers from across the UK who work at the interface between mathematical modelling, infectious disease control and public health policy. You can see more content produced with JUNIPER here.