A new, free web site caught my eye his week: ItRunsInMyFamily.com. The site is subtitled, "Using family history to improve your health." I must say that I am pleasantly surprised by the services available at this free web site. I am in a hotel room in Salt Lake City right now and do not have all my records and family health information with me. However, I plan to spend more time on this service as soon as I return home.
Quoting from the web site:
ItRunsInMyFamily.com is for you. You are the ultimate steward of your own health. We believe that giving you more power and control over your own health information will lead to better health outcomes. We believe that by helping you create your own family health history, we are empowering you to look inside your own genome and discover potential health risks before they occur. Our goal is to help you improve the quality of your life through family health history.
ItRunsInMyFamily.com is an open-access tool created and developed by SGgenomics, Inc. a privately held corporation that funds and develops innovative genetic & health based ideas. We encourage and invite everyone to use our family health history tool without cost or obligation. Tell your friends, family, patients, and colleagues that this service is available for all to use.
The online Family Health History Tool allows people to create a comprehensive family health history report that can be used by a healthcare professional. It is capable of charting complex family relationships and storing pertinent family health information in standardized pedigree nomenclature. It will reduce the amount of time that doctors and other health professionals spend in collecting data, thereby allowing for more time to be spent in evaluation and defining treatment.
The ItRunsInMyFamily.com Family Health History Tool v1.0 and website features:
• Patent-pending pedigree-first design and features
• Adheres to Standardized Human Pedigree Nomenclature
• Follows the family health history core-data set recommendations established by the American Health Information Community (AHIC).
• 12 selectable diseases include: Heart Disease, Stroke, High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Type II Diabetes, Breast Cancer, Ovarian Cancer, Lung Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Skin Cancer, and Osteoporosis.
• ‘Other’ option to enter any disease, condition, or trait
• 5 generation/3rd degree relative family member pedigree
• Unique family relationships (adoptions, half-sibs, pregnancy, etc)
• Fully editable personal and health information
• Health summary module
• Pedigree Assistant to assist user
• Linkup and automatically share info with family members*
• Save and store with login accessibility
• Print or E-mail family health history report
• EHR, EMR, PHR interoperability available with licensing
• Customizable tool features available with licensing
• Adobe Flash 9.0 platform
• Zoom in/zoom out, pan, expand screen capabilities
• Change proband
• Disease information available for selectable diseases
• Prevention Techniques
• Family Health History Guide
• ‘How to’ videos
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Personal information protected with SSL, firewall, data encryption, HIPAA compliant hosting
For more information, go to http://www.ItRunsInMyFamily.com. You might also want to check the introductory video at the web site. The same video is available at http://rootstelevision.com/players/player_rootsliving.php?bctid=4887219001 and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0FKiuzV5s.
Thanks for the heads up.. Cancer runs in my family and this is a great website to provide my family doctor a look into diseases that run in my family tree. Health care providers should be jumping on this website, what a way to reduce medical costs, treat the disease before it happens!! Obama should use this program as a way to help save health care costs....
Posted by: Rick Allan | January 10, 2009 at 01:42 PM
Well, the obvious question is how long before info like this is used against people? Being a pessimist, I do not have that kind of faith that it will stay out of the "evil accounting" offices.
Posted by: Deb Allen | January 11, 2009 at 07:54 AM
I have given talks on this subject for about 8 years. The Surgeon General stated we should all do a medical genealogy for our selves and for the family's future. I beleive we can help solve some of the problems we have if enough of us would share our medical knowledge and the one of the Surgeon General's said the same thing. With enough data we can resolve some things our grandchildren may not have to deal with knowing data ahead of time.
SusiCP
Posted by: Susi C Pentico | January 11, 2009 at 04:35 PM
How is this different from My Family Health Portrait available from the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General?
Posted by: David Reed | January 11, 2009 at 10:48 PM
This is a GREAT idea, but you will not be able to control the information to keep it out of corporate hands. The cost of insurance today for everyone, employers included, will lead to non-hire of people with pre-disposition to costly medical conditions. Some of the technology being worked on today is developing id cards that will eventually include this and all information on individuals. With my love of genealogy the direction we are heading should thrill me. But instead, the genes of my forefathers are warring in my head that this is not leading to a free society.
Posted by: Deb Allen | January 12, 2009 at 02:59 AM
Do they allow you to import personal genomics information from companies like 23andMe or do they plan to allow it if they don’t already?
Posted by: James Larry Vick | January 12, 2009 at 07:26 AM
Sorry, I tried it out, and found that it still has too many bugs. After struggling to get the data in and trying to save it, I was told that this option was not available yet. I'm sure they will eventually fix it, but for now it's not ready for primetime. I'll stick with My Family Health Portrait from Dept HHS, less bells and whistles, but you end up saving the data as a PDF file on your own hard drive.
Posted by: Clifford G Andrew, MD, PhD | January 12, 2009 at 05:09 PM