Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of using uropathogen infection testing for diagnosing urinary tract infections.

The Department has not made a specific assessment. There are several sources of guidance regarding the diagnosis of urinary tract infections (UTIs), including from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the UK Health Security Agency.

The TOUCAN study was part-commissioned by NHS England as an assessment of future more timely diagnostics, including various point of care tests for UTIs in primary care.