The NHS in England is undergoing a radical change in the structure and breadth of genomic services. The drive towards developing a national Genomic Medicine Service will facilitate the delivery of personalised approaches to diagnosis and treatment for patients across the UK. It is anticipated that similar changes will apply to the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Overall, these innovative changes represent an exciting opportunity to embed personalised approaches to diagnosis and treatment of ophthalmic disease, at the heart of clinical practice. Ophthalmology is well placed to take advantage of this given the preponderance of genetic advances in our specialty
Ensuring clinicians, researchers and those who influence funding streams within ophthalmology embrace genomic medicine is key to capitalising on all the benefits from this new branch of medicine.
This document is to keep members informed of developments with the UK genomics services. However, this is a very fast moving area with rapid developments driven at the national level. The information in this document is correct as at February 2020.