Family Health History

One of the critical building blocks that will enable the new age of personalized / precision medicine will be solid family medical histories. Certified genetic counselors Beth Balkite and Rachel Mills, in their Osher Lifelong Learning course at Duke University this spring, called a good family health history the:

single most important source of information about your future health and risk of illness and your 'free' genetic test.

Healthcare Personalized for You:  

Understanding Genomics and Precision Medicine:

Balkite and Mills say knowing and sharing information about your family history with your medical practitioners is important because:

•Having a first degree relative with a disease can increase your risk for the same disease 2 or 3 fold

•First degree relative = parent, sibling or child

•Having two first degree relatives with the same disease can increase your risk 5 fold

•Similar risks are found if you have other relatives with the same disease

The size of our family health histories will vary. How many first degree relatives do you have? My mother had 16 -- including 13 siblings and 1 child. I had only 4 -- including no siblings and 2 children. Including only first degree relatives is a good start. Collecting and sharing this information is more than most of us do systematically; but including second degree relatives is much more useful and is a much more daunting task.

What is a second degree relative? The simple answer is that it is anyone who is a first degree relative of your first degree relatives. In my example in the previous paragraph, my second degree relatives would include anyone who was a first degree relative of my mother, father and children. My manageable number of 4 first degree relatives explodes to 68 second degree relatives and this does not include the "in-laws" who are not related to me by blood but are to many of my relatives:

•  4 grandparents;
•  2 parents;
•  3 paternal siblings;
•  4 paternal 1st cousins;
• 13 maternal siblings;
• 39 maternal 1st cousins; 
•  0 siblings; and
•  3 grandchildren.

This project looks like it is getting totally out of hand. However, if we want to know if something "runs in the family", even more relatives than this may need to be examined.

If you just can't wait to get started charting your family medical history, here are some of the conventions that have emerged from early diagrams tracing color blindness:

 

Balkite and Mills provide one example of how your chart may look as you proceed through the process:

Of course this is only the beginning. If you want to do all of this online, resources are beginning to emerge that will guide you through the creation process, give you a vehicle for sharing with family and health professionals. They also protect your privacy as you go. These include: My Family Health Portrait; and TapGenes.

Check them out and find one that fits your style. This post is intended only to wet your appetite. You will need all your traditional family history (genealogy) research skills to make this a useful tool as you apply DNA test results in partnership with your health practitioners to use the power of personalized medicine preserve your family's health.

The Winning Innovators for 2017 Are

Last year a big portion of the $100,000 in cash and in-kind support from the Innovation Showdown at RootsTech 2016 went to TapGenes which has continued to develop its product and outreach for those seeking to organize and share family health information. 

This year 40 contestants from the US, Europe and Canada entered the competition. Ten semifinalists were invited to compete this week in Salt Lake City during  the world’s largest family history technology conference. In case you want to look back at those semifinalists now, you can look at my earlier post where the ten are listed with links to where you can find more information.

Judging focused on both the promise of the product as well as the soundness of the business model. Each contestant had two minutes to present the product. Then the panel of five judges had a combined two minutes to ask questions or make comments. If you are familiar with the television show Shark Tank on ABC, you should be able to visualize this format. 

Although the originally announced prize pool of $100,000 in cash and in-kind support was impressive, three new sponsors emerged and enabled the awards to swell to almost twice that amount. The new sponsors were Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kickstarter Seed Fund and Sorenson Legacy Foundation. Friday the five finalists competed before a live audience and those watching via streaming around the world. Both those in Salt Lake City and those streaming were able to text their choices. Interestingly, the people's choice and the judges choices were different.


2017 RootsTech Showdown Winners

First Place Judges’ Choice ($90,000 cash, AWS credits, and an investment from Kickstart Seed Fund), Bill Nelson of OldNews USA.

OldNews USA

The easiest way to find your family in historic newspapers - on your phone!

Second Place Judges’ Choice ($44,000 cash and AWS credits), The Qroma tag mobile app for embedding stories into pictures, tagging them by voice commands, and making the data accessible on various platforms.

Third Place Judges’ Choice Award ($26,000 cash and AWS credits), Louis Kessler, Double Match Triangulator, an app to help sort autosomal DNA matches into groups of relatives.

People’s Choice ($25,000 cash and AWS credits), Kindex, an app designed to help users create searchable, shareable archives of family letters and other documents using tags to help users easily locate information.

The distinguished panel of judges were: 

Kenyatta Berry, Co-host of The Genealogy Roadshow; 
Al Doan, Co-founder and CEO of Missouri Star Quilt Company;
Thomas MacEntee, Founder of High Definition Genealogy;
John Richards, Founder and CEO of Startup Ignition; and
Dalton Wright, Partner in Kickstart Seed Fund.

More information about the awards competition can be found in the press release.

Keep in mind that the overall winner may not be the new product that will be the one most useful to you in your research. 

Now There Are Ten Innovation Semifinalists

Last year a big portion of the $100,000 in cash and in-kind support from the Innovation Showdown at RootsTech 2016 went to TapGenes which has continued to develop its product and outreach. This year there are still ten semifinalists competing for a similar windfall of support and recognition. That number will be reduced to those to receive final consideration by the middle of next week. By the end of the week the 2017 winner will be announced.

In case you want to take a peek at those semifinalists now, I have listed them below in alphabetical order with links to where you can find more information: 

Champollion 2.0

The scribe for savvy paleographers   

CSI: Crowd Sourced Indexing

Small organizations need an easier way to manage their indexing projects, and this is it. 

Cuzins

Cuzins is a mobile app that shows how you're related to friends & celebrities, and how they're related to each other

Double Match Triangulator (DMT)

An autosomal DNA analysis tool for genealogists   

Emberall

Capture, organize, store and share the life history of a loved one - from your smartphone in as little as 30 minutes!  caption

JoyFLIPS

We combine easy photo scanning, voice storytelling, and AI that brings in relevant historical data from everywhere   

Kindex

Accessible, searchable archives for everyone through collaborative record sharing and indexing. 

OldNews USA

The easiest way to find your family in historic newspapers - on your phone!

QromaTag

Add your story to any photo using your iPhone and your voice. 

RootsFinder

Family history for the whole family 

As the finalists are announced and I've had a chance to examine each product and talk with its developer(s), I'll update the list and add more information. If you are among the fortunate ten thousand or so of my closest genealogical colleagues who will be joining me in Salt Lake City for RootsTech, you will have a chance to "kick the tires" and "look under the hoods" of these new products over on Innovation Alley (through the turquoise gateway over the entrance on the left below) in the Exhibit Hall.

If not I'll try to update you as the competition unfolds. Keep in mind that the overall winner may not be the new product that will be the one most useful to you in your research. 

Family Health History: TapGenes

When the possibility of DNA testing for identifying possible health issues is raised, a sizable segment of the medical community responds that such testing is unnecessary because a family health history is more useful. Fortunately, I believe the number of practitioners espousing this belief is diminishing. Actually, it’s not either/or. Genetic testing should be part of a comprehensive family health history.

Those of us who have been serious family historians for a while, recognize that we rarely have a complete health history of three or more generations of our family. Even if we have been able to collect death certificates for our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents (along with their siblings), really don’t have detailed information upon which medical diagnoses can be based. Some of our relatives died in wars, childbirth, epidemics or other causes before their underlying health conditions manifested themselves. In addition, many the causes of demise listed on many death certificates are too vague to add much guidance to present day diagnoses. Most patients, when asked to fill out family health histories in a clinician’s office, have far less reliable information than those of us who are genealogists.

DNA testing, even if is of whole genomes, also represents other challenges. Many medical practitioners are not knowledgeable about DNA and may feel threatened to admit this to their patients. This avenue to information within our bodies was not available when most of them received their professional training. Much as we might wish it were the case, DNA testing cannot provide information on all the causes of our current or future states of health. Environmental factors still contribute significantly.  The long running “nature” versus “nurture” debate rages on.

Part of RootsTech 2016, which I attended earlier this month, was an Innovator Showdown competition for a prize pot of $100,000. An international field of 46 competitors was narrowed to 12 prior to the conference. At the Media Dinner on Wednesday, that group was narrowed to 6 finalists. On Friday these remaining competitors were interviewed before thousands of attendees. The panel of judges then selected the winners with participation of the audience who voted on their smartphones. First place went to TapGenes. The winners received $20,000 in cash and additional in kind awards that more than doubled that amount.   

Yes, the eagle eyes of some readers have identified Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist, seated in the lower left background, who was a member of the distinguished panel of judges.

TapGenes offers you the convenience of keeping all your family health history in one safe and secure place.

A visit to the TapGenes website will explain what this prizewinning app has to offer you and your family. If you wish to signup right away please use this link.