About one in 50 Australians has a DNA variant that could cause life-threatening disease — and almost none of them know it.
DNA Screen is the world-first Australian screening program study that finds these people before disease finds them. In our original pilot study, we tested 10,263 Australians and found 202 people carrying a hidden genetic risk of cancer or heart disease. For every one of them, that result could be the difference between prevention and a diagnosis too late to change the outcome. We know this works. We know it saves lives. And we know it would be cost-effective to do it for every Australian adult.
The only thing missing is the decision to fund it.
Australia already spends big on treating preventable diseases.
● Cancer is the most expensive disease category in the Australian health system, costing $19.7 billion a year, more than any other illness, and a figure that has more than doubled in a decade.¹
● Cardiovascular disease adds a further $16.9 billion a year to the bill.¹
● Independent research puts the average health system cost of a single cancer case at roughly $34,000 in the first year after diagnosis alone, and around $50,000 in a patient's final year of life.²
● A genetic test that finds risk before diagnosis costs a few hundred dollars, once, and opens the door to prevention, surveillance, or early treatment that is dramatically cheaper — in dollars and in lives — than treating advanced disease.
Every year population genomic screening is delayed is a year Australia pays the highest price for disease it could have prevented for a fraction of the cost.
¹AIHW, Health Expenditure Australia 2023–24;
²Health services costs for cancer care in Australia estimates, 45 and Up Study (PLoS ONE).
They are not people who"should have known." Population screening — testing everyone, not just people who already look high-risk — is the only approach that actually works.
Sam's doctors told her, more than once, that her family history wasn't a concern. DNA Screen told a different story: a high-risk BRCA1 variant, carrying a lifetime risk of over 70% for breast cancer and over 40% for ovarian cancer. Sam is now on the pathway to a preventive mastectomy. To those who've suggested that's an extreme step, her answer is blunt: living through breast cancer and chemotherapy is the more dramatic outcome — and it's the one this test lets her avoid. Read more about Sam’s story here.
Two DNA Screen participants, each identified as carrying a BRCA2 variant. For Amy, this knowledge informed the treatment of a cancer diagnosed shortly after taking the DNA Screen test; for Kara, this has led her to take measures to drastically reduce her risk.
Check our FAQs for more information about the DNA Screen pilot study.
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