Genomics welcomes the Government’s plan to transform disease prevention in the NHS through the use of polygenic risk scores, according to its CEO and Co-Founder, Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, a world-leading geneticist.
- The NHS is set to use polygenic risk scores (PRS) to help people live longer, healthier lives and shift NHS efforts from treatment to prevention through the creation of a new Genomics Population Health Service.
- The announcement follows the successful clinical trial, in 2021, of PRS in cardiovascular disease prevention in a collaboration between Genomics and the NHS.
Oxford, England, 4 July, 2025. Genomics, a healthcare company using large-scale genetic information to develop innovative precision healthcare tools and to accelerate drug discovery and development, has welcomed the publication of the NHS 10 Year Plan. The document sets out the government’s ambition to transform the way we prevent all of the common diseases using population polygenic risk scoring: the creation of the Genomics Population Health Service.
Genetics is fundamentally important for common, chronic diseases – diseases like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, breast and prostate cancer – the conditions which cause most of the sickness and premature mortality in our populations, and which use 70-80% of healthcare budgets.1 It is now known that for each disease, there are a million or more places in our DNA that affect our chance of developing the disease. This can be summarised for each disease by what is called a polygenic risk score (PRS), with a single genetic test taken once in a person’s life, revealing their personalised level of risk for all the common diseases. This approach is called ‘Genomic Prevention’. The NHS 10 Year Plan is set to offer this technology under a Genomics Population Health Service.
The inclusion of polygenic risk scores in Wes Streeting’s prevention agenda is a significant step forward to adopting technology which has the potential to help prevent significant numbers of cases of disease and save NHS budget. Recent research in cardiovascular disease suggests over 45,000 cardiac events could be prevented over 10 years when combining PRS genetic testing with standard clinical risk testing, saving the NHS over £146 million.2
This announcement builds on the UK’s world-leading position in genomics, and follows the successful trial of the use of PRS in cardiovascular disease, in a collaboration between the NHS and Genomics. In the HEART clinical trial, 2021, NHS GPs tested the combination of PRS and clinical risk factors in the NHS Health Check for cardiovascular disease. The trial was successful and met its primary endpoint, in establishing that the combination of the polygenic risk score with the standard-of-care clinical risk calculator (QRISK) fitted in with GP workflows. In addition, the trial showed that the inclusion of genetics was very popular with patients, with 98.5% of them finding the information helpful. The trial also established clinical utility, by showing that in 13% of cases GPs changed their management of patients. GPs also reported that the additional personalisation added significant value in the GP-patient conversation about risk reduction options.3
The NHS Plan suggests integrating genomic insights into cardiovascular disease prevention and care through a trial with Our Future Health implementing Integrated Risk Scores. Genomics is the exclusive provider of genetic results for the flagship Our Future Health programme, leveraging our proprietary technology and algorithms built over the last 10 years.4
The NHS has also pledged to expand genomic testing for inherited causes of major diseases including cardiovascular disease predisposition, such as familial hypocholesteraemia (FH). In 2024, Genomics published a study which showed that 8% of the adult population have the same risk of heart disease due to polygenic risk, as do carriers of rare genetic mutations that cause FH, and that 18 times more early cases of heart disease were due to this polygenic risk group than to FH.5 The NHS plan to use polygenic risk will now allow identification of individuals in both these high-risk groups, who can then be offered treatment to reduce their risk. Statins are substantially more effective in the high-polygenic risk group than they are on average.
The NHS Plan further promises a new globally unique set of studies that will explore personalised prevention of obesity, applying genomic and other insights to identify people who are at the highest risk of developing obesity. Earlier this year, Novo Nordisk and Genomics announced a partnership combining Novo Nordisk’s expertise in obesity science and Genomics’ world-leading understanding of genetics to develop an Integrated Risk Tool that can determine who’s at risk of getting obesity based on their genetic predisposition and other risk factors, in order to better target and personalise obesity prevention. Genomics’ research shows that a person’s genetic background is crucial in identifying who’s at high risk of developing obesity.6
“With Wes Streeting’s shift from treatment to prevention as one of the key strategic pillars for the NHS, combined with the extensive evidence we have from the HEART trial, it is the perfect time to roll out polygenic risk scoring to help people live longer, healthier lives - and give us far more time with our loved ones.” said Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, co-Founder and CEO at Genomics. “Genomic Prevention using Polygenic Risk Scores will allow the NHS to target current screening and prevention programmes for common, chronic diseases more effectively – the right people will be better able to access the right programmes at the right time to help avoid disease entirely, or to catch it early when outcomes are best.”
Genomics has established offices in Oxford, London, and Cambridge in the UK, and in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, with labs in Framingham, US.
Genomics’ genotype-phenotype database is widely considered the most powerful in the world. Well over 100 research papers have been written using our PRS released by UK BioBank.7
A UK company, Genomics has raised over £100m to date, and has the leading polygenic risk technology in the world. The company has been recognised as one of the UK’s fastest growing private tech companies and 2025 Best Place to Work.
Genomics has over a decade of expert experience in handling personal data. Genomics prioritises data protection in our contracts, in the industry and regulatory standards we follow, and in how we structure ourselves as a company. Privacy is at the core of our design.
To learn more about polygenic risk scores, our polygenic risk score Health Insights UK test - the first ever UKCA-marked and MHRA registered test that combines genetic and clinical factors - now available via private providers, or to learn more about Genomics, visit https://www.genomics.com/.
ENDS
About Genomics
Genomics is a pioneering healthcare company that uses large-scale genetic information to develop innovative precision healthcare tools and bring new understanding to drug discovery. We were formed in 2014 by four world-leading statistical and human geneticists at the University of Oxford. Today, we are collaborating with some of the world’s leading healthcare organisations and helping them to predict, prevent, treat, and cure – dramatically reducing the human and financial cost of common diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Media contact
Zuzanna Grzeskiewicz, Director of Communications, Genomics
Footnotes
1: Department of Health. 2010. Long Term Conditions Compendium (3rd edition). https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/nhs-belongs.pdf
2: Genomics, 2025. Data on File.
3: Ahmet Fuat, et al. , A polygenic risk score added to a QRISK®2 cardiovascular disease risk calculator demonstrated robust clinical acceptance and clinical utility in the primary care setting, European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Volume 31, Issue 6, April 2024, Pages 716–722, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurjpc/zwae004
4: Genomics. 2022. OFH. https://www.genomics.com/newsroom/genomics-plc-announces-genetic-risk-scoring-partnership-with-our-future-health-to-test-new-personalised-disease-prevention-approaches
5: Genomics. 2024. FH. https://www.genomics.com/newsroom/genomics-plc-identifies-increased-levels-of-undetected-risk-of-heart-disease-in-uk-population
6: Genomics. 2024. https://www.genomics.com/newsroom/genomics-releases-new-research-showing-significant-link-between-genetic-risk-and-obesity
