Otherwise known as the Darzi Report, High Quality Care for All was published yesterday, 30th June 2008. The introduction states ‘Through this Review, the NHS has created its own ambitious visions for the future of health and healthcare.’ and ‘This report will enable the local NHS to achieve what matters to us, to patients and to the public – improved health and high quality care for all.’
I thought I’d mark out the passages from the report that deal with genetics.
There is a sentence in section 18, page 28, “With the advances currently underway in genomic testing, we may be able to predict future disease rather than simply understand present illness.” This sentence is referenced, K Philips et al, “Genetic testing and pharmacogenomics: issues for determining the impact to healthcare delivery and costs,” Am J of Managed Care, 2004 Jul; 10(7): 425-432. (You can find that article here.)
And that’s it. Nothing else.
I accept that this is a high level report, aimed at offering a steer to the future direction of services, but for a report that has created ‘ambitious visions’ of ‘improved health’, it’s a little disappointing that genetics doesn’t feature more.