Health Education England (HEE) has announced the extension of an online tool, which helps clinicians make genomics decisions for patients, to advanced nurse practitioners.
HEE said the GeNotes tool, which provides educational information which can be accessed during patient consultations along with links to bite-sized further learning, has already been tested by oncology and paediatrics staff, receiving a 90% usability score so far and ‘high praise from clinicians’.
It has now invited advanced nurse practitioners,practice pharmacists, GPs, and physician associates in primary care to try out the tool, working through a patient scenario, and give their feedback via an online survey. The results will be used to improve the final project, it added.
The Genomics Education Program has also announced that completing the survey can be counted as free CPD around genetic scenarios.
Dr Jude Hayward, primary care adviser to HEE’s Genomics Education Programme, said that GeNotes will be ‘a vital resource for primary care’.
‘In developing GeNotes, we have fine-tuned the resources to offer just the information a busy clinician needs at the point of patient care. Our user research is an important component to help us make further improvements before we roll out the service more widely across primary care.’
Pharmacogenomics testing, which uses a patient’s genetic profile to analyse how they will respond to a certain drug, is already used for a small number of medicines in the UK, and is used across the NHS for cancer and rare and infectious diseases.
It said that there was evidence that a patient’s genetic profile can account for a varied response to many commonly prescribed medications, including painkillers, beta-blockers, and anti-depressants.
A version of this article first appeared in our sister publication, The Pharmacist
