By Diagnostics World Staff
July 16, 2015 | Ancestry today announced the launch of
AncestryHealth, a new entity and resource to empower
consumers with important health insights to help promote wellness, prevent
illness, and support healthier living. The company named Cathy A. Petti, MD, as
AncestryHealth’s Chief Health Officer.
At the same time, AncestryDNA announced that it has tested more than one million people with its $99 microarray
tests. The service is growing quickly; in a first quarter earnings report in
April, the company reported that its AncestryDNA database contained 850,000
genotypes. The reported results include ethnicity information across 26
regions/ethnicities and identifies potential relatives.
AncestryHealth’s first offering is a free service, currently
in beta, that gives consumers the ability to compile their family health
history information with the help of their Ancestry family tree. Ancestry currently
holds more than 16 billion historical records, more than 70 million family trees.
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Because certain health conditions like breast cancer, heart
disease, and cystic fibrosis can run in families and be traced, knowing
important information about one’s family’s health history can help individuals
and their physicians be more aware of potential health problems and take the
necessary steps to reduce and prevent risks. AncestryHealth's report gives "family history effect" scores to help individuals begin to understand how their history affects their risk.
“Ancestry fundamentally believes family history is a
powerful tool that not only can educate individuals about their past and where
they came from, but can inform their future,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of
Ancestry, in a statement. “This new service leverages expert research and
delivers customized information to consumers about the risks and prevention
measures to help empower them to make healthy lifestyle choices. Combined with
the breadth and scale of Ancestry data, we expect AncestryHealth to be a key
piece of the puzzle as we look to understand how health is passed down through
generations, and we are excited to have Dr. Petti lead this effort.”
AncestryHealth integrates health information with expertise
in genealogy to help consumers trace health conditions along family lines and
understand what it means to individuals and their families, while recording
this valuable information to share with their physicians and future
generations. The company also plans to work with institutions to integrate
family health history data into electronic medical records to better help
physicians use family health history as a screening tool.
In her role, Dr. Petti will work alongside the genomics,
bioinformatics, privacy and security teams to lead a health-focused strategy
and create a valuable consumer health experience, starting with
AncestryHealth’s family health history offering. Dr. Petti will also lead
medical and regulatory affairs. Dr. Petti comes to Ancestry with rich expertise
in clinical diagnostics and global health including roles at HealthSpring
Global, TriCore Reference Laboratories, and Global Head of Medical, Scientific
and Clinical Affairs for Novartis Diagnostics. Dr. Petti is board certified in
both internal medicine and pathology subspecialties.