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Tomography

Volume 457: debated on Monday 5 March 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many PET-CT scanners there are in the UK; and where are they sited; (121620)

(2) how many PET-CT scanners are in clinical use and routinely available to NHS patients; and how many are used for research purposes only;

(3) how many PET-CT scanners are provided by the NHS; how many by private providers of services to the NHS; and where such scanners are sited in each category;

(4) what provision has been made for the expansion of PET-CT scanning services in England.

The Department does not routinely collect this data.

However, in October 2005 the Department published “A Framework for the Development of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Services in England” on its website. Annex C (pages 24-27) of this publication identified the various types of PET-CT provision available in England in August 2005 and the location of those scanners. A copy of this publication has been placed in the Library.

Since this publication, an additional £10 million capital funding has been made available to the national health service for the next two years (2006-08) to support the development of the NHS PET-CT facilities.

A further 25,000 scans will be made available from the independent sector via the phase 2 diagnostics procurement on the independent sector treatment centre (ISTC) programme, It is anticipated that on completion of this programme the contracts will provide additional mobile PET-CT scanning facilities over 24 sites initially with two of these becoming static sites.