Family Health History: An Entry for Personalized Medical Practice in Primary Care

The successful practice of personalized medicine in primary care depends upon understanding a patient’s individual disease risk and anticipating the best course of treatment with the goal of maintaining good health. A personalized disease risk assessment leads to recommendations for evidence-based interventions that can delay/prevent disease onset or reduce the severity of disease. As the sophistication of medical diagnoses develops and new interventions become available, the value of collecting and analyzing family health history (FHH) for maintaining patient wellness by determining ‘the right treatment, at the right time, for the right patient’ is more apparent than ever. FHH remains underutilized in primary care, however, because of numerous barriers. Ironically, the introduction of genetic tests and genomic methods that identify carriers who might be vulnerable to a variety of medical conditions and diseases has simply raised the importance of collecting and utilizing FHH to guide patient management in primary care.