There is increasing interest in pharmacogenomics. However, it is also widely acknowledged that implementation of pharmacogenomics into clinical practice has been slow. Implementation is being undertaken in many centres in the US, but this is not nationwide and often focused on highly specialised academic centres, driven by champions. To date, there has been no implementation on a whole country basis. The UK National Health Service (NHS) is a single integrated healthcare system, which provides free care to all patients at the point of need. Recently, there has been a drive to implement genomic medicine into the NHS, largely spurred on by the success of the 100,000 genomes project. This represents an unprecedented opportunity to implement pharmacogenomics for over 60 million people. In order to discuss the potential for implementing pharmacogenomics into the NHS, the UK Pharmacogenetics and Stratified Medicine Network, NHS England and Genomics England invited experts from academia, the healthcare sector, industry and patient representatives to come together to discuss the opportunities and challenges1. This report highlights the discussions of the workshop with the aim of providing an overview of the issues that need to be considered to enable pharmacogenomic medicine to become mainstream within the NHS
