In a continent like Australia with its vast remote regions you might expect that access to genomic testing was highest in major cities with large hospitals and other health services.
And you’d be right. But an Australian Genomics study looking at the unmet needs of genomic testing also found that on a per capita basis the rate of testing was higher in some “remote” areas compared with major cities.
Concentrated testing numbers were found in key rural areas with outreach clinics, particularly in large states such as Queensland and Western Australia.
Those outreach clinics give regional communities more access to genomic medicine, particularly for paediatric patients, a factor that might have contributed to that finding, the study says.
It was also higher in some areas irrespective of their socioeconomic status.
The findings, published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, are based on a study of the geospatial distribution of genomic testing nationally between remoteness areas, and areas of varying socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage.
The five geographic categories were: major cities, inner regional, outer regional, remote and very remote.
The study analysed data from seven NATA-accredited laboratories across Australia, grouped into 547 local government areas (LGAs). Fifty-seven LGAs did not record any genomic tests.
Almost three quarters of tests were found to be for paediatric patients, and microarray was the most common form of genomic testing.