England and Denmark share the ambition of developing personalised medicine for the benefit of patients. Both countries have developed and operate major national infrastructures for advanced genomic medicine to be used for national healthcare services and to facilitate research within personalised medicine, respectively.
Therefore, it is of great advantage for both countries to enter into a partnership, to share knowledge and exchange relevant experiences and ideas.
"Personalised medicine is constantly evolving in Denmark and internationally. By facilitating knowledge-sharing across borders, the Danish National Genome Center (DNGC) aims at contributing to the implementation of cutting-edge genomic medicine in healthcare. Therefore, we look very much forward to sharing experiences with our English colleagues. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will facilitate further collaborative activities to help tackle some of our common challenges in implementing personalised medicine, such as standardisation and the storage and access to genomic data. Working together will ensure that patients receive the best treatment possible."
– Bettina Lundgren, CEO at the Danish National Genome Center
To support equitable access to genomics across the National Health Service in England and provide standardised care across the population, NHS England launched the NHS Genomic Medicine Service in 2018, building upon the expertise and results from the 100,000 Genomes Project.
Bettina Lundgren says: "When we start the work of developing a new national strategy for personalised medicine in Denmark, we will look at what England has done in their strategy process and learn from their experiences."
One of the main collaborative activities promoted under the MoU concerns the exchange of experience and expertise regarding the possibility of offering innovative genomic testing for improved outcomes in cancer, rare, inherited, and common diseases and to enable precision treatments and interventions.
“It's really going to be valuable for both England and for Denmark, that we then enter a partnership with a formal Memorandum of Understanding about collaboration between our countries. We can share our research data, so you will be able to access the National Genomics Research Library data. And I'm hoping UK researchers will come and work with Danish researchers looking at Danish data too, when the Danish set up is able to do that. There's also a lot about clinical implementation across rare diseases, cancer, newborn sequencing, pharmacogenomics and so on, that we should be able to share with each other. We’ll have a lot in common, which we can learn from”
- Matt Brown, CSO at Genomics England
The MoU was signed by Bettina Lundgren, CEO at DNGC and Matt Brown, CSO at Genomics England, at the Annual Meeting on Personalised Medicine 2023 on September 13th 2023.
About Genomics England
Genomics England collaborates with the NHS to provide diagnostics based on whole genome sequencing. Additionally, they equip researchers to identify the causes of diseases and develop new treatments.
More about Genomics England here
About the Danish National Genome Center
DNGC is an agency under the Ministry of the Interior and Health, supporting the development of personalised medicine in collaboration with the Danish healthcare system, research institutions, and patient organisations.
The DNGC develops and operates a national infrastructure for personalised medicine, including a national infrastructure for performing whole genome sequencing and storing of information in a national genome database, and a national research infrastructure supporting the further development of personalised medicine.