The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the aim is to enhance the identification, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of various conditions such as cancer, heart diseases, and rare genetic disorders – including kidney and neurological conditions – that can go undetected for years.
Specially trained nurses, along with other NHS staff, will help patients and family members through genetic testing that can identify the inherited causes of these major conditions.
It will also enable them to find patients suitable for genomic testing, and genomic counselling if needed, the DHSC added.
Chris still needs more tests to find the definitive cause of his cardiac arrest.
Dr Teofila Bueser, who is based at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and also from the Genomic Medicine Service Alliance said: “Genetic testing is really important because if a patient has a cluster of symptoms and it can be hard to make sense of that, it helps to get to a diagnosis and that patient gets the right treatment.
“If a person has a clinical diagnosis for something they suspect is genetic, then a genetic test can confirm that.”
Catherine Renwick, nurse consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust added: “If we can predict disease in patients and provide treatment early on, then it will reduce the burden on the NHS in the longer term which we desperately need to do.”
Chris has now had a defibrillator implanted into his chest and, due to genetic testing, he will be monitored for the rest of his life.