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University of Virginia Medical School Awarded $1.5 Million for Web-Based Medical History Tool

The University of Virginia School of Medicine has received a $1.5 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create a web-based family history tool for individuals and their primary care doctors.

Health care is on the brink of a dramatic transformation as a result of the Human Genome Project, said William Knaus, chairman of the health evaluation sciences department at U.Va. and director of the project. People will need to know their complete family history, including how a specific gene works in their family.

Doctors, especially primary care physicians, will need assistance in interpreting genetic information and applying it to disease prevention strategies for their patients. Many primary care doctors currently use family histories to support a suspected diagnosis rather than predict or anticipate disease risks.

Over the next two years, Knaus and his colleagues will develop and evaluate a web-based approach to the collection and interpretation of family history information concentrating on common chronic disorders, such as heart disease, cancer and non-insulin dependent diabetes. As part of the process, a multidisciplinary team of primary care doctors, genetic counselors, educators and computer experts will develop software to assist primary care doctors in evaluating family history information for disease treatment options, disease or health screening recommendations, or health promotion indications. This is especially important for primary care doctors due to the increasing time limitations imposed on the practice and the rapidly changing knowledge base surrounding genetic implications, Knaus said.

At the conclusion of the two years, the U.Va. researchers plan to have a user-friendly electronic tool to assist individuals in the accurate and complete collection of a medical family history, Knaus said. They also will have preliminary results that indicate patient and doctor satisfaction with the web-based system.

The use of the Internet should make it easy to update medical histories to create a living document, Knaus said. We will be able to give doctors very specific advice about what a family history means in light of the most current published research. The medical advice can be tailored to people based upon what their specific risks are, rather than general advice.

November 30, 1998