Genomics research is helping us to understand the genetic causes of disease, enabling earlier diagnosis, targeted treatments, and more effective prevention. It also drives innovation across healthcare and the life sciences sector, improving patient outcomes while creating significant economic and scientific opportunities.

Wales has strong genomics research capabilities in a number of areas, including mental health, dementia, cancer, rare disease, and pathogen genomics, as well as cross-cutting expertise in functional genomics and pharmacogenomics.

Health and Care Research Wales have been working with Genomics Partnership Wales and key partners in healthcare delivery, academia, and strategic policy to develop a strategic research plan for genomics in Wales which will:

• Strengthen and expand core genomics research capabilities in Wales
• Develop infrastructure and digital systems
• Develop skilled, sustainable and collaborative genomics workforce
• Support translational research
• Ensure ethical, inclusive, patient-centred genomics research

How We Got Here

The Genomics Delivery Plan for Wales (2022-2025) included a commitment to develop a Genomics Research Strategy for Wales that would support genomics research in Welsh higher education institutions, health boards and other centres of excellence.

To begin developing a research strategy, an external advisory group was formed to conduct a review of the current genomics research environment in Wales. This included defining the research remit and scope across the translational pipeline, consultation with partners and the public through GPW’s Sounding Board and reviewing the ongoing requirements of the genomics research in Wales. This work has resulted in a strategy that sets out four strategic objectives with associated actions to be taken forward over the next five years.

How Will We Deliver This Plan?

A newly appointed Research Lead will work alongside the Genomics Partnership Wales Research Group to develop and an action plan and implement activity to realise the strategic objectives within this plan. This will require strategic partnerships to be developed nationally and internationally to attract opportunities for research funding and enhancing research opportunities.

What Will Success Look Like?

The ambition of this strategy is to achieve significant benefits to the research community in Wales. Our objectives are:

• Objective One: we aim to deliver a unified, credible leadership framework across NHS–academia–industry
• Objective Two: we aim for a visible, growing Welsh genomics research community
• Objective Three: we aim for trusted, scalable consent and data-sharing foundations
• Objective Four: we aim for fit-for-purpose compute, analytics, and workforce to exploit data at scale

Read the Plan