INVITATION: Participation in an interview study on NIPT

We would like to invite you to participate in a qualitative study on the ethical issues arising from the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) into routine antenatal care in England, France and Germany. We are a research team at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford. Our study, entitled ‘Non-invasive prenatal genetics and genomics in England, France and Germany - Exploring practical ethical issues 'on the ground'’ has obtained approval from the Central University Research Ethics Committee (Ref: R64800/RE001) and is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/T00908X/1).

The aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of the views and experiences of women, professionals’ (healthcare professionals, laboratory staff, geneticists, policymakers, scientists) and other stakeholders involved in NIPT in countries that have decided to offer NIPT as a second tier test. We hope that the findings of this comparative research will contribute to improved practice.

We would like to invite you to contribute to our study because of your expertise in the development, implementation and/or offer of NIPT.

Your participation would involve an online interview (45-60 min) with one of our researchers. The questions will be open-ended to take into account your point of view. The interview will gather your experience with regard to the following themes: women’s antenatal screening pathway and introduction of NIPT to routine testing; information given and discussion; communication of results and decision-making; general views on NIPT; future developments of NIPT.

For more detailed information about the study, we would like to invite you to read the accompanying information sheet. It should take not more than 10 minutes to read the sheet.

If you would want to discuss the research and have any questions, and/or you would be happy to participate in our study please contact us per email: adeline.perrot@ethox.ox.ac.uk or ruth.horn@ethox.ox.ac.uk  

Please see here for more information on the study.