Babies: Screening
(asked on 18th July 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Muscular Dystrophy entitled Newborn Screening for Rare Conditions, published in May 2023, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the recommendations of that report that the UK National Screening Committee should (a) give greater consideration to existing real-world evidence and (b) consider international evidence from countries with similar health systems during its review of new conditions to be included within the NHS newborn screening programme.
The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has published its evidence review process, which outlines the type of evidence taken into consideration when making a screening recommendation, and is available at the following link:
The UK NSC is clear that screening is introduced where the benefit to screen clearly outweighs the harm, this is underpinned by robust peer-reviewed evidence.
The UK NSC considers a wide array of evidence when making recommendations, including published peer-reviewed evidence, public, clinical and academic commentary and real-world evidence undertaken internationally. However, the UK NSC needs to be confident when making screening recommendations that the offer to screen is supported by robust evidence that clearly illustrates that the benefit outweighs the harms.