The All Wales Medical Genetics Service (AWMGS) at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has been operational for over 30 years.  Advances in technology have meant there is a new understanding of the human genome. 

The AWMGS provides specialist genetic services to individuals and families with, or concerned about, rare genetic conditions. The service is made up of clinical genetics and laboratory genetics, which together provide medical genetics services to the population of Wales.

 

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board hosts the AWMGS at the University Hospital of Wales (UHW), Heath, Cardiff. 

 

Specialist consultant geneticists, and genetic counsellors provide genetic services in all the main hospitals throughout Wales. The laboratory receives samples for analysis from across Wales.

 

For many years, genetics has been a specialist service, dealing with rare genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, inherited breast cancer, Huntington’s disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

 

Over the last ten years genetics has significantly progressed with the sequencing of the human genome.  The whole of a person’s DNA can now be sequenced due to changes in technology.