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Online “My Family Health Portrait”
By Ira Wilsker, APCUG Director; Columnist, The Examiner, Beaumont, TX; radio & TV show host

WEBSITES:
http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory
https://familyhistory.hhs.gov
http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/download.html

Recently, a relative in another state was hospitalized via an emergency room admission.  His new wife of just a year did not have much information on the family health history, so urgently needed by the physicians in order to diagnose and treat my relative.  Urgent phone calls followed, gathering the requisite family medical history to enable the appropriate diagnosis and treatment.  Philosophically, what if a comprehensive family medical history could have been immediately available?  This circumstance is not unique, but a reasonable solution has been available for free for over a year at www.hhs.gov/familyhistory, courtesy of the U. S. Surgeon General’s Office

This site explains the necessity of such data with the statement, “Health care professionals have known for a long time that common diseases - heart disease, cancer, and diabetes - and even rare diseases - like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia - can run in families. If one generation of a family has high blood pressure, it is not unusual for the next generation to have similarly high blood pressure. Tracing the illnesses suffered by your parents, grandparents, and other blood relatives can help your doctor predict the disorders to which you may be at risk and take action to keep you and your family healthy.”  In order to accomplish this task, the Surgeon general offers two simple options; one an online web maintained version hosted on a secure server (that is what the “https” means in the internet address) at https://familyhistory.hhs.gov, the other a 1.6mb downloadable “Zip” file which may be stored on a home computer, and utilized in the privacy of the home.  The files created in either version can easily be exchanged among family members via email or disc.

In the online version, a family history can be newly created, or an existing version can be uploaded from the home computer to the secure Surgeon General website where the data can be managed, and then saved back on the home computer; no personal information is saved or captured by the government computer, protecting the privacy of the user.  It should be noted that much effort has gone into the creation of this web based service, in that it explicitly works equally well with almost all known browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mac Safari, Netscape, and many other browsers.  

The first step in using the online version is to “Create a Family History”, or to “Load a Saved Family History” if a file had been previously created.  The preliminary step is to create a personal profile, where basic information such as name, gender, height, and weight are entered.  The personal profile continues with a simple checklist of major common diseases (such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes), and age of onset, followed by a fill in the blank chart of other diseases.  After the personal health history is created, there is then an opportunity to create a family profile.  The family profile states “Only add family members that are biological (blood) relatives (not adopted or step-relatives).”  Similar fill in charts are presented to complete the information for the other family members.  Data can be modified, added, or deleted at any time.  Once the user has completed entering the basic family information, a button “Go to My Family” takes the user to the basic “Family Health Portrait” where a family health tree can be displayed or printed; this family tree contains symbols and abbreviations immediately recognizable by a health care practitioner as a basic family health history.  Other family members, such as aunts, uncles, and other blood relatives can be added to the list as well.  Other family members listed on the family tree can have their own personalized family tree created at this point, and the entire file can be downloaded to the user’s computer, leaving no personal data on the HHS computer.

If for privacy or other reasons, the user does not wish to enter personal family health data to the secured website, the downloadable version is a self-contained version of what is available on the website.  Once uncompressed with any zip utility (built in to Windows XP), the file is easily and quickly installed.  The software does require the Microsoft “.Net” utility, version 1.1 or later, available for free at windowsupdate.microsoft.com.  Once installed, the entire process is completed in the privacy of the home, with no personal data leaving the computer, unless the user desires to send the data files to other family members to complete or use as a basis for their own family health history.

With this information readily available both within a family unit, and shared with other blood relatives as appropriate, family health histories can be easily maintained, and distributed or printed as needed.

Many times we cannot recall family health problems that family members may have had which may give us a predisposition, or otherwise genetically affect us.  With this free service and software from the Surgeon General, we may all be better able to provide our health care professionals with the information that may prove so vital to our health care and treatment.
	
There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.