Lord Freyberg – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Freyberg on 2016-01-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the costs per test in rare disease treatment using (1) whole genome, (2) whole exome, and (3) medical exome, sequencing; and if those figures are not available, why not.

Lord Prior of Brampton

This information is not held centrally by NHS England or the UK Genetic Testing Network. Where the cost of these tests falls outside of tariff, costs will vary according to commissioning arrangements, the systems in place and the technology used.

The cost of whole genome sequencing will continue to change in line with advances in technology. Costs will also need to be defined and include full bioinformatics analysis and clinical interpretation which is likely to be more costly than the sequencing itself.