Foundation One CDx
If you or a loved one is facing cancer, we want you to have access to the highest quality and most efficient care. At Irish Life Health we are passionate when it comes to looking after our members’ health and are relentlessly working with our partners, keeping abreast with the advances in cancer care.
There is a rapid pace of change in the management of cancer. There are newer diagnostic tools available that can better inform treatment decisions, which may enable better outcomes for these patients.
With this in mind, Irish Life Health are delighted to announce a partnership with Foundation Medicine, part of the renowned Roche Products (Ireland) Ltd. We are delighted to be the first health insurer in Ireland to reimburse Foundation Medicine Comprehensive Genomic Profiling tests.
What are the tests? Who are they for?
This new benefit will cover the cost of solid and liquid biopsy testing (FoundationOne CDx and FoundationOne Liquid CDx) provided by Roche Products (Ireland) Ltd for patients with primary lung cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, advanced breast cancer, advanced colorectal cancer and cancer of unknown primary origin.
What are the benefits of the test?
The Foundation Medicine tests assess the complex individual profile of a patient’s cancer. It provides information about clinically relevant biomarkers and genomic alterations to help match patients to approved targeted therapies, immunotherapies and clinical trials, giving Physicians and patients powerful insights for navigating cancer care. This may result in better response rates to treatment, prolonged time to treatment failure, improved survival and Improved Quality of Life. Not only is it important to identify the driver mutations in a patient’s cancer, it is also critical to identify resistant mutations which will help rule out treatments that will not be of benefit to the patient. The Foundation Medicine tests also identify mutations associated with a particular tumour type that the patient does not have. This helps to rule out treatments that will have little / no clinical benefit. Targeted treatments can reduce the cytotoxic side effects of some older treatments and can also lead to a reduction in Emergency department visits. It can also help to avoid any unnecessary biopsies.
How is the test done?
CDX is a liquid blood test so you will not need a surgical tissue biopsy, which in some cases can be difficult to obtain and a patient may not have enough tissue to allow a viable sample to be used.
Information is correct as at July 2025