Are the costs of genome sequencing underestimated?

August 14, 2019 James Buchanan Publication $1000 genome, cancer, costs, genome sequencing, genomic technologies, genomics, health economics, rare disease, whole genome sequencing

Four years ago I blogged on how “The $1000 genome is a myth”. I think the first paragraph from that blog post is as relevant today as it was in 2015:

Barely a day goes by without a news story or social media post proclaiming that the $1000 genome now exists, and is ushering in a healthcare revolution. Every day, somebody, somewhere in the world, posts these graphs on Twitter. There’s even a Wikipedia page devoted to this topic. It’s a persistent news headline and, frustratingly, it’s currently wrong.

Since 2015, the health economic evidence base for genome sequencing has gradually expanded, and several cost estimates are now available, but overall I think we still lack the sort of rigorously conducted microcosting studies that can usefully inform resource allocation decisions regarding genomic testing.

Hopefully this paper that we published in Genetics in Medicine a couple of weeks’ ago can make such a contribution.

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Medicine’s future? The health economics of population-wide genomic screening

October 26, 2017 James Buchanan Other cancer, cardiovascular disease, cost-effectiveness, costs, geisinger, genomic screening, genomics, health economics, usa, whole exome sequencing, whole genome sequencing

The latest issue of Science contains an interesting and lengthy article on how Geisinger are trying to integrate genomic screening into routine care in Pennsylvania, USA. Although this is an exciting area of research, and the business model surrounding these innovative approaches to genomic sequencing is quite interesting, I have a number of reservations about the cost-effectiveness of population-wide genomic screening.

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The cost-effectiveness of next generation sequencing in colorectal cancer

October 22, 2015October 22, 2015 James Buchanan Paper review cancer, Carlos Gallego, Caroline Bennette, David Veenstra, economic evaluation, genetics, genomics, health economics, next generation sequencing

So, apologies again for the radio silence. Good news though: the PhD has finally been submitted! That’s not quite the end of that chapter in my life though, as I still have a viva to complete and six more publications to prepare to add to the two that have been published in the last 18 months or so. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more of my PhD outputs from the start of 2016 onwards, depending (of course) on the vagaries of the peer-review process.

Anyway, I now have time to read and then write about all of the publications that I’ve been putting to one side over the last few months. I’m going to start with a paper by Carlos Gallego et al. which was published in JCO in May, and which considered the cost-effectiveness of next generation sequencing (NGS) panels for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer and polyposis (CRCP) syndromes.

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Genomics at the 2015 iHEA meeting in Milan

July 15, 2015July 16, 2015 James Buchanan Other cancer, conference, cost-effectiveness, DCEs, decision-making, discrete choice experiments, economic evaluation, genetic technologies, genetic testing, genetics, genomic technologies, genomic testing, genomics, health economics, healthcare, iHEA

Apologies for the recent lack of blog posts. It turns out it takes a lot of effort to get a PhD written up alongside other research commitments. Normal service will be resumed very soon. For now, a few quick notes on the International Health Economics Association meeting in Milan which has just concluded. Specifically, this is a quick review of the presentations that I attended which had a link (however tenuous!) to genomics. Continue reading →

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