On Mar. 11, 2015, the National Health Service (NHS) announced that Patients in the NHS had begun receiving personalised care based on their DNA code. Two families have been diagnosed with rare conditions as part of a project at Newcastle Hospitals and University that used an analysis of their genomes – the complete set of people’s genes – to properly understand the health issues they were experiencing.

One hundred thousand genomes will be sequenced across the country, making the UK the world-leader in collecting and decoding human genomes to help scientists and doctors understand rare disease and design personalised treatments.

The first drug to be approved through the Early Access to Medicine Scheme (EAMS) has been named as pembrolizumab, which is designed to treat patients with advanced melanoma. The treatment is considered a next generation drug in cancer care, stimulating the body’s immune system to fight the disease.

The building of 2 proton beam therapy cancer treatment centres at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester will start this summer. Varian Medical Systems has been named as the equipment supplier for both, with Bouygues UK as the building contractor for UCLH and Interserve Construction Ltd at the Christie.

The government has invested £250 million in the facilities to give NHS patients a highly-targeted type of radiotherapy that can treat hard-to-reach cancers without causing damage to surrounding tissue or other side effects. The centres are expected to open for patients in 2018.