Paper short abstract:

I show how the UK government has overhauled NHS genetic testing services to enable the aggregation and exploitation of DNA data, following a logic of assetisation. I will explore tensions between assetisation and the healthcare goals of the NHS, by focusing on the risks of techno-economic lock-in.

Paper long abstract:

In this talk, I show how the commitment of the British Government and NHS England to a logic of assetisation has resulted in DNA (and other patient) data becoming regarded as a key resource to foster the bioeconomy. This is especially clear in their genomics strategy and the implementation of NHS England’s Genomic Medicine Service (GMS) since 2018. Here, I analyse how this commitment to assetisation has been translated in the transformation and overhaul of NHS England’s genetic testing services into the GMS.

I discuss how a vision of assetisation and platformisation emerged in the 2000s and 2010s and how genomic and wider NHS data were reframed as an asset that can be aggregated by standardising and centralising NHS services. Then I will show how this vision has been translated into a new infrastructure for the genetic testing services through what was called the 100,000 Genomes Project, which laid the foundations of the current GMS. In this new infrastructure, the services are centralised and standardised to enable the production and aggregation of genomic data in a database operated by Genomics England, a government owned company. Genomics England controls the access to this database and is tasked to leverage it to stimulate research and the bioeconomy. My analysis will explore tensions between assetisation and the healthcare goals of the GMS, especially by focusing on the risks of techno-economic lock-in for the GMS and the NHS in general.