Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the level of investment required to extend capacity and capability for cerebrospinal fluid and blood-based biomarker testing within this Parliament.

NHS England has established a dedicated programme team to prepare the National Health Service for the potential arrival of new Alzheimer’s treatments that are approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and determined to be clinically and cost-effective by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, including use of biomarker testing.

As part of national preparations for the potential future roll out of Alzheimer’s disease modifying treatments, NHS England has commissioned horizon scanning which has helped the NHS and other national partner agencies to better understand the current pipeline and maturity of digital and biomarker-based innovations in development in the academic and commercial sectors.

NHS England is also working with partner agencies to support and inform further research into other diagnostic modalities, including blood-based biomarker and digital tests.

Public and charitable partner funding has been invested in new research which will help us to understand whether or not blood based biomarker tests improve the speed and accuracy of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or change treatment decisions in clinical practice, and research findings will influence whether these tests become a future standard of care in the NHS.