Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what economic modelling NHS England has carried out on the net budgetary impact of introducing a national molecular pathology service in cancer; what estimate they have made of the direct annual cost of such a service; whether they have considered switching off any legacy services to help fund its introduction; and if so, which.

NHS England is developing a National Genomic Medicine service and this will bring together both existing clinical genetics services, and new genomic laboratory infrastructure to provide seamless service delivery for patients with rare and inherited disease and cancer. However, NHS England is not introducing a national molecular pathology service in cancer and therefore has not carried out economic modelling or an estimate of cost for such a service.

A key element of the Genomic Medicine Service is the National Genomic Test Directory which outlines the entire repertoire of genomic tests – from existing tests for single genes and molecular markers Whole Genomic Sequencing to Whole Genome Sequencing – that are available as part of the National Health Service clinical service. This includes cancer genomic tests.

As part of the NHS Genomic Medicine Service, a National Genomics Informatics System (NGIS) is being developed by Genomics England, on behalf of NHS England. When fully operational NGIS will enable NHS England to monitor the number of genomic tests being carried out across the country and benchmark activity.