Dr Helen Hanson is a Consultant in Clinical Genetics, specialising in Cancer Genetics at the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

In her clinical role, Helen sees patients and families who have an inherited susceptibility to cancer. These are rare conditions, where there may be limited and/or inconsistent clinical evidence to suggest how to best manage these patients in clinical practice.

Helen's work focuses on how best to improve clinical care for these patients, bringing together national and international experts and patients to colloboratively develop best practice guidelines to address the gap between gene discovery and clinical care. Through her BRC role, she will continue and expand work from the CanGene-CanVar project, a 5-year £4.3 million Cancer Research UK catalyst award-funded programme (https://www.cangene-canvaruk.org), to develop further guidelines and set up a National Inherited Cancer Predisposition Register.

The register will allow them to better understand the number of patients in England who have an inherited predisposition to cancer, providing an opportunity to improve clinical care and to study in greater detail cancer incidence, survival and the impact of risk reducing or early detection interventions by linkage to other national datasets.