Tech Integration

In recent years the desire of wanting to know your ancestral history has become increasingly popular, so why not allow participants to access their results directly from their iPhone? Well, now there’s an app for that! 23andMe has integrated with Apple’s ResearchKit® application. Now information on 23andMe can contribute to large scale medical studies and with growing participation, there is hope of accelerating research and making an impact on genetic data, and it’s all at our fingertips. User’s information can also be easily accessed on any device connected to Wifi and through signing into the 23andMe website. Big Data is utilized through 23andMe’s research. In a blog post on Feb 8th, 2017 Michael Snyder, director of Stanford’s Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine, used himself as a test case to find the right data and integrate it into a clinical practice. In a recent book he wrote on the subject, he argued that,

“Big Data information can be used to manage one’s health prior to the onset of disease,”

and further discussed how some of the kinds of useful data that can now be collected on a person — from biosensors, to genetic data, to data from electronic health records — and how best to use this information can be integrated into managing a person’s health.