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Geni Forum » Suggestion Box
Medical History Suggestion
(46 posts)-
SUGGESTION - Medical histories are vitally important to many families. So much can be done with this it's unreal. I would consider adding a "Medical" option along with the favorites and personal information, where someone could add major medical problem(s) or cause of death. It would be really cool if eventually this information could be linked to the tree or a tree could be created showing who in the family was affected by it. This information would need to be tagged as only visible to family. It would be an incredible genetic visual for so many!
Posted 3 years ago # -
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I think that this is a very important feature to have, and my mother has also requested it. At the very least, there should be a 'cause of death' field.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I third this suggestion.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Yea sounds a great idea... what about a tiny icon next to the name showing how they died?
Like one for cholera, Typhoid etc?Posted 3 years ago # -
I want "regicide" to be one of the available choices. ;)
Posted 3 years ago # -
I want \"regicide\" to be one of the available choices. ;)
I get the feeling that you're just boasting hehePosted 3 years ago # -
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and I want bloodtype so I know who to run over in case I would need an organ donor ;-)
Posted 3 years ago # -
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This was requested by a relative of mine as well (a doctor). He has been trying to get us all to compile a family medical history tree for our medical purposes.
Posted 3 years ago # -
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It could be another fantastic feature if families could use Geni for "Personal Health Record" with all your medical information, collected from all of your doctors, hospitals, and health insurance providers etc.
- # Calendar (for a time-based view of your medical record: tests, treatments, visits or other relevant occurrences)
# identification information (e.g. name, picture, address etc)
# demographic, religious preference, etc information
# activities (behavioral issues, like smoking, excercise, etc)
# alerts and allergies
# important conditions
# emergency contacts
# family history
# healthcare provider contacts
# hospitalizations
# insurance information
# immunizations
# medical devices
# medications
# test results and self-monitoring measurements (e.g. cholesterol, blood glucose, etc)
# treatments
# advance directives (organ donor information, etc)# Family History Summary - the medical conditions of your blood relatives. This can be critical information to share with your doctor, to help him/her to choose the best medical diagnostic tests to perform on you. Many diseases, like cancer, hypertension, and heart disease have a strong genetic component.
Here in UK the government are spending BILLIONS on developing such a system, so if I on top could email my GP access to me and my families medical records on Geni I'm ure Geni could make billions as well!!!!
Posted 3 years ago # - # Calendar (for a time-based view of your medical record: tests, treatments, visits or other relevant occurrences)
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to se an online example of Personal Health Record go to http://www.recordsforliving.com/HealthFrame/Features.aspx either geni should buy them or go into a joint venture!!
Posted 3 years ago # -
If you want medical history to be useful, we first need the option to differentiate between biological and adoptive parents.
Posted 3 years ago # -
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adoptive parents and their ancestors medical history might be interesting but wouldn't be of much use for you, hence medical history should be optional in geni
Posted 3 years ago # -
I was just thinking that medical histories would be a great idea, and look, there's a whole discussion section about it! I agree that adoptions need to be shown for this to properly work, and a sort of medical risk summary would be very helpful. If users feel uncomfortable about letting everyone know their specific medical history (for example, alcoholism) there could be an option to submit data anonymously, so that it would show up in a summary, but not on the person's profile. Once technology advances, you could even upload your entire genetic code (anonymously of course), and your descendants could access their risk factors based on any identified genes.
As for a "cause of death" field, this data would only useful for natural deaths, and it would seem a bit insensitive for causes such as murder, suicide, genocide, hate crime, execution, drug overdose, drunk driving, or a tree falling on them (happened to someone in my family) to appear on someone's profile. These might all be lumped under "unnatural death", and specifics might appear only for those whose date of death is more than 100 years ago, or if there are no living relatives that were alive on the date of death.
I'm getting a little off the topic, but I feel the idea I mentioned earlier of submitting data anonymously for statistical purposes could be used for a variety of applications. For example, you might see what percentage of your family have been farmers or doctors, lived below poverty level, had red hair, went to college, been in the military, lived in another country, won the lottery, etc. This idea that the data is collected for statistical purposes only, and cannot be traced back to a specific person without their permission, makes it more likely that people will submit.
These other statistical applications are merely for amusement, but an accurate medical history is much more important, and would be a great feature to have on Geni.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Interesting suggestions. However security is an issue that Geni would, I suspect, not want to to take on, particularly as the service is free. Liabilities would include 1) disagreement from other family memebers as to the cause of death E.g. :
"She died slumped over a keyboard adding to her family tree.".
"No she didn't, she had a venereal disease. Or was it AIDS?"
"Oh, I was never told that. Does that mean I have it too?"So, my suggestion is that at best, Geni provide a link to deceased-only family records at the Health Frame website. The data is privately viewable, and Geni can negotiate with the Records for Living (Dying?) site to 1) build a section for deceased-only members; 2) get a special price for Geni members. Geni make a percentage of the sale to fund development, and any surplus for my next holiday.
Regs, PaulPosted 2 years ago # -
the medical history must be kept private for living persons!
Posted 2 years ago # -
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I have needed a way to make a family health history for a very long time- I was just adding anything I knew about deceased family members to the "about me" section in case anyone was looking for it, but a specific field and way to access it would be great!
It would be nice for a living person to have a choice to toggle on the health history field if they wanted to after a profile was claimed by using a password protected access. I know some of my relatives are active advocates for specific health issues because they have dealt with them personally (i.e. cancer, spina bifida, etc.) but it would be a very touchy subject for other people to be able to add that information without permission about someone else.
Blood types could be a bit of a sticky situation. Sometimes it is very important to know these things. I know of someone who needed a kidney transplant and only after testing found out that none of the siblings he grew up with were even close- it seems they had the same mother but different fathers. Fortunately he started his quest very early in the timeline and has been able to pursue other options without worrying that it was immediately urgent. I would guess that it would be enlightening in a way that might not be so pleasant if family members (who have a clue about such things) started looking too closely. I know of a couple of situations where I would expect people on my tree might find out that they are not after all blood relatives. For the sake of a health history, that is valuable information but for the sake of emotional health, it could be quite devastating.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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Just uploaded my gedcom 5.5 from here to http://www.myheritage.com
Good Points:
1. I am very surprised how great the family tree looks
2. The speed is amazing: No spinning disk like on Geni
3. It doesn’t auto add Country details, which means if I don’t want to add a county it will be left as “BLANK”.
3. The ability to add different jobs and address
4. Adding source information is a missing part of geni.com, which myheritage.com has.
5. Import feature...
6. Smart Search... Automatically find matches to profiles in your tree with other trees.
7. A Nice Flash map feature to show how many members per country.Bad Points
1. There is a COST! If you upload more than 1000 profiles... Where as geni.com is FREE: Hopefully forever!
2. No User community – The last post was 3 days ago!
3. The main site looks over crowded, as if they have to stuff every bit of content on their template – Geni.com is simple and shows your family tree on logon!
4. Unable to add members to contribute to the tree... or I couldn’t find the feature
5. The Tree area only showed 2 Generations of a family... Not very easy to see the tree and edit it.
6. No profile created for a member of your family like on geni.com, you simple have an imput box that has lots of options.OK... That’s my two pennies worth.
Posted 2 years ago # -
The medical history posted by od is quite extensive and does bring in to play the legal implications for Geni to start up this kind of section. But I completely agree that a section like this needs to be available. If anything, there should be a place for general medical history (diabetes, eye diseases, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc) in the deceased family members. For those who are still alive, a more conservative approach could be to allow only that person to add their history. While members of the tree can usually edit each other's profiles - leave the medical part of living relatives only editable to themselves if they join, otherwise it cannot be added. As a scientist, I know that almost all health issues, from the relatively minor (high blood pressure) to the large, well-known diseases (Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's) all have a genetic component. It would help family members and their doctors alike if they knew what problems their relatives suffered from. A family tree's value is immensely increased when one can use the information for the health of future generations.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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Organ Size would be nice as well...
Posted 2 years ago # -
Agreed: we need a field for Cause of Death.
Posted 2 years ago #
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