genetic technologies

Using genomic information to guide ibrutinib treatment decisions in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia

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A quick update for you on my PhD publications. Last year, I completed my PhD which considered the issues surrounding the economic analysis of genomic diagnostic technologies in the UK NHS. So far, I have published three papers reporting the results of this work:

I am pleased to be able to report that the fourth paper arising from my PhD work was published today in PharmacoEconomics, titled: “Using genomic information to guide ibrutinib treatment decisions in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: A cost-effectiveness analysis“.

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Genomics at the 2015 iHEA meeting in Milan

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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 →

What are the real costs of sequencing?

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I normally steer well clear of the topic of sequencing in newborn babies because this area raises so many social, legal and ethical questions that go way beyond the clinical/economics perspective that we’re used to considering. However, I read an interesting commentary piece the other day by Jacques Beckmann titled ‘Can we afford to sequence every newborn baby’s genome?’ which I think deserves a wider audience for two reasons. One, it reminded me of a comment that Professor Sir John Burn (director, NHS England) made during the recent Astellas Innovation Debate in London. Jonathan Dimbleby asked if he could see whole genome sequencing (WGS) being rolled out to everyone across the UK, to which he replied: “the reality is that even when we get the 100,000 Genomes Project fully operational and get it absorbed, we’ll only be doing maybe 30,000-50,000 whole genomes a year – we’d have to do 600,000 a year to catch up with the new babies”. Second, I think there are some points raised in this article that go beyond newborn screening and are directly applicable to the economic evaluation of genomic testing in a variety of clinical contexts.

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Introduction

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Hello. Chances are you’re a health economist, although you might also be a researcher in a different field of healthcare. You might even be a scientist (apologies in advance for any bad science that might follow). Whoever you are, you’re very welcome. The aim of this introductory post is to tell you what you should expect from this blog. Hopefully you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to return, read some more articles and contribute to the growing debate surrounding the application of standard health economic methods in the field of genomics.

This blog is going to assume that you know a little bit about genomics. Specifically, this blog is going to assume that you have at least read the “What are genomic technologies?” section of this blog, a short introduction for a layperson who already has a little bit of science knowledge. Of course, many of you will have a greater knowledge of genetics and genomics than this simple introduction, but this blog is intended to be broadly accessible to stimulate wide debate, so the aim is to keep the genomics jargon to a minimum. This blog is also going to assume that the average reader has some basic knowledge about health economics. Those who don’t could do a lot worse than frequent the excellent “Academic Health Economists’ Blog”.

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