DNA mapping to better understand cancer, rare diseases and infectious diseases (Department of Health, 5 July 2013)

The body that will support the NHS in England’s developments in stratified medicine was today named as ‘Genomics England’.

Building on Prime Minister David Cameron’s commitment to genomics in medicine, outlined in the Government’s Strategy for UK Life Sciences: one year on report, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that Genomics England “will provide the investment and leadership needed to dramatically increase the use of [genomic sequencing, data linkage and analysis] and drive costs down.”

Focussing initially on priority areas of cancer, rare diseases and infectious diseases, Genomics England is expected to manage contracts between the NHS and service providers in sequencing, data linkage and analysis, and support a secure database linking an individual patient’s medical records with their genome to personalise diagnosis, aiming in parallel to provide a uniquely powerful research resource.

The Government has made a pledge of £100 million to the field to support training of specialist skills and integration of the technology within the wider healthcare community, meet the ‘100,000 patients sequenced’ target it set itself in the above report, and set up the Genomics England database.

Source: Department of Health

For further information, the Association of Medical Research Charities has published a policy blog post on what this means for medical research.