Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of trials of a test designed to identify pregnant women at risk of miscarriage; and whether his Department plans to roll this out on the NHS.

The Government is committed to considering the latest research and evidence that will improve the experiences and outcomes for women at risk of miscarriage.

The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR is currently funding a £1 million award focused on a device that delivers vital doses of progesterone to women with threatened miscarriage. If approved, this would become the world’s first drug-device combination product to treat threatened miscarriage. The new technology could help over 150,000 women in the United Kingdom who experience threatened miscarriage each year.

Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage and Research at the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire is piloting a new test to identify women with an abnormal womb lining that increases their risk of miscarriage. We will carefully consider the findings of this pilot when it concludes.