Intermountain Genetics Institute at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City Wins Prestigious Microsoft Funding to Create Innovative Electronic Tool to Gather Family History

Salt Lake City -- June 12, 2008 -- Microsoft on Tuesday announced it would fund efforts by the Intermountain Healthcare Clinical Genetics Institute located at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City to create an electronic tool for gathering family health histories.

Intermountain’s Clinical Genetics Institute is one of 15 organizations to receive support from the Microsoft HealthVault “Be Well Fund,” a resource designed to inspire internet-based health applications to improve patient lives. Nearly 200 groups from throughout the nation applied for the inaugural round of funding.

“It’s very rewarding that Microsoft recognized the value of the work we want to do,” says Marc Williams, MD, the director of the Clinical Genetics Institute, which requested $168,800 for the project. The institute will learn later this month the dollar amount of Microsoft’s award.

“Everyone knows how valuable a family health history can be, but sometimes important information gets left out. Sometimes all the right questions get answered, but the doctor can’t find the history in a thick file of paper records,” he says.

As a result, a patient’s family history may be overlooked during treatment and routine exams.

“We want to simplify the process so that gathering that information is quick and painless and – most importantly -- easy to share electronically with all of a patient’s healthcare providers,” he says.

Taken and stored correctly, a good family health history can play a guiding role in patient care. Physicians who know about a family history of breast cancer, for example, can talk with a patient about genetic testing to see if he or she carries a telltale gene. If there’s a history of colon cancer, doctors may begin screening at an earlier age than usual.

The Clinical Genetics Institute will use Microsoft’s HealthVault -- an Internet tool designed to help individuals collect and share health information -- as the framework for an electronic family health history.

The project aims to empower patients and allow them more control over their health history – a new concept in heath care. Patients will be able sit at their home computers and log on to an Intermountain website, where they will answer a series of guided questions to create a comprehensive history, including information on the six top familial diseases:

• heart disease
• stroke
• diabetes
• colon cancer
• breast cancer
• ovarian cancer.

The information will be stored in a standardized way so that the data can be sent to doctors’ offices and hospitals, and be recognized by their different electronic records systems. It will also be protected by all of Intermountain’s rigorous security measures.

The program will be written to highlight risks associated with each patient’s history, ensuring that doctors are made aware of any testing or counseling that should be done.

“The ‘Be Well Fund’ winners share our vision of using the internet to empower people to fully engage in managing their health and improving health outcomes,” said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft Corp. “We’re excited to help these organizations turn their ideas into reality and to expand the capabilities and services available through HealthVault.”

The Clinical Genetics Institute at LDS Hospital tracks the latest research and innovations in genetics and genomics to make improvements in the quality of care given to Intermountain Healthcare patients throughout the Intermountain West. The Microsoft project is just one component of the institute’s efforts to improve the collection of family health history data.

Media Contact:
Jess Gomez
801.507.7455

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