For the most part, EHR vendors have not yet developed the software to support management of family history and genetic data as discussed here. They are not completely to blame. Like any other business, they focus their resources on tools and innovations that their customers need or want. We, the consumers of EHR products, have not yet made this a high enough priority.
Ultimately, detailed and discrete family history, genetic, and environmental data can be fed into evidence-based algorithms, some already in existence, others yet to be developed, to drive clinical decision support that helps physicians at the point of care to deliver safer, more efficient, and more effective medical care. What stands in our way is the ability to gather and organize this data.
EHRs, despite the frustration of implementing and learning to use them, are the key to unlocking this potential.
Please consider asking your EHR vendor to develop the family history and genomic data tools necessary to enable truly individualized medicine.
Dr. Levy is with the division of general internal medicine and the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.