DISQUS

BijanBlog: The family tree is missing medical history

  • Adrian Bye · 2 months ago
    very good point. we've also been working hard on our family tree and have tracked people back to the 1750's. tip: look for the hardcore genealogists in remote family segments. they'll do most of the heavy lifting for you :-). but you're right on about the medical records. ideally we should know family health records for every family member including those from the 1750's.
  • bijan · 2 months ago
    Wow. 1750s. That is awesome.

    -bijan
  • reecepacheco · 2 months ago
    I'm fortunate to have a grandmother who 1. did our genealogy going back to the 1600's and 2. is a nurse. Great combination for a personal medical record advisor for me, but certainly the exception to the rule.

    I'd love to see electronic medical records in a usable format for end users, so you could go through your family tree and understand your genetic health better.
  • bijan · 2 months ago
    that would be powerful.
  • dwax · 2 months ago
    very interesting post, imagine when everyone has their DNA scanned and can provide that info as well in a family tree/medical history.
  • Jeff Wells · 2 months ago
    Our company Genetree, Inc is doing just that. We specialize in DNA sampling with pedigrees and are now forging the ability to tag digital medical records as well. Let me know if I can help you. I am the CEO of the company and would love to explore this with you more.
  • bijan · 2 months ago
    interesting. how does it work?
  • Durjoy (Ace) Bhattac · 2 months ago
    Great post. There is definitely a network effect to sharing electronic medical information. It's only really valuable to society if enough of us do it. Privacy and security issues are important and I don't want to downplay them, but the potential is obvious. But until we fix our current health insurance system, there is a strong disincentive for anyone to do this.

    This isn't a technology issue, it wouldn't be a stretch for large scale PMRs like Google Health or MS Healthvault to offer this. I could totally imagine a layer on top of their current apps, sort of a social graph on top of your health information.
  • mdoeff · 2 months ago
    I think this would be vary valuable. Like you said, this is a bit of a hornet's nest when it comes to people overcoming their privacy concerns. I noticed that Geni is dipping their toe in the water with this. If you look at the Statistics page it gives you average life expectancy for male and female and longest lifespans for male and female. The Pro package seems to have some additional stats. Geni should definitely expand in this area.

    I'm a big fan of Geni. We have a tree dating back to the 1500's.
  • bijan · 2 months ago
    whoa, 1500's. That's incredible. I gotta get my act together.