AncestryHealth

This post will be updated as new details become available.

In an early-morning press release on October 15, 2019, Ancestry.com announced their entry into the health and wellness market with a new product,  AncestryHealth.

Actually, AncestryHealth is two products, based on different DNA tests, giving different amounts of information, and with different pricing models.  Both products are independent from the genealogy testing that Ancestry offers.

 

AncestryHealth Core

The Core level of AncestryHealth is based on microarray tests, which are the type of autosomal DNA testing we use for genealogy.  Those tests examine about 700,000 spots in our genomes that are known to vary among individuals.  That’s enough genetic information to suggest family relationships—which is why they’re so popular among genealogists—and to identify many biomedical traits.  It’s not a complete picture of the genome, though.

The Core service includes reports for nine health conditions, listed below, and eight wellness traits, like lactose tolerance.

Health Conditions in the AncestryHealth Core

    • Lynch Syndrome (linked to colon and uterine cancers)
    • Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer
    • Cardiomyopathy
    • Familial Hypercholesterolemia
    • Hereditary Hemochromatosis
    • Hereditary Thrombophilia
    • Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Status
    • Tay-Sachs Disease Carrier Status
    • Sickle-cell Anemia Carrier Status

All reports are reviewed by an independent network of physicians and genetic counselors and will include references to the biomedical literature.  Reports may be supplemented by educational webinars as well as guidelines to mitigate risk for individuals with increased chances of developing certain diseases.

In addition to the reports, Core also includes a family health history tool that customers can use to track conditions that run in their families.  Family health histories can be downloaded to be shared with your personal physicians.  These downloadable reports identify your family members only be relationship to you rather than their names to protect their privacy.

The entire interface was designed with ease of navigation and mobile users in mind.  The reports list key takeaways for ease of interpretation and are geared for you to share with your physician.  The educational materials include webinars and access to genetic counselors when warranted, and the family health history tools had features to minimize typing on mobile devices.

Simulated images of a health & wellness report, educational resources, and the family health history tool, from the AncestryHealth Core website

Access to Core is overseen by an independent clinician network of physicians and genetic counselors who will approve the tests.  If, for example, you’ve had a bone marrow transplant, you may not be approved (because your results would be those of the donor).

If you’ve already done an autosomal DNA test at Ancestry, you can add AncestryHealth Core for a one-time cost of $49.  And if you did an earlier version of the AncestryDNA test, they will reprocess your stored sample as part of that $49 fee.  (No, reprocessed data will not be incorporated into your AncestryDNA matching data.)

For the time being, those of us who registered multiple DNA kits within our accounts will only be able to order AncestryHealth for the primary kit on the account to protect the genetic privacy of the other individuals.  (The ability to register multiple kits in an account dates from before mid-2017.)

Customers new to DNA testing at Ancestry will need to do the AncestryDNA test in addition to purchasing AncestryHealth Core.

The fine print says the tests are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are not diagnostic. AncestryHealth Core is not available in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, or outside the USA.  The company is working to obtain regulatory approvals in other countries.

 

AncestryHealth Plus

AncestryHealth Plus will include all of the features of Core in addition to new reports every few months, updates to existing reports based on new science, and—most exciting of all—next-generation sequencing starting in early 2020.

Next generation sequencing, or NGS, is a catch-all term for several modern methods to quickly sequence most or all of an entire genome.  Rather than sampling only about 700,000 so-called “markers” in your DNA, it looks at millions of them.  Thus, NGS can potentially find many more traits of interest than microarrays.

Screenshot from the AncestryHealth Plus website

 

The quality of NGS data depends on something called “coverage”, that is, the number of passes or “reads” the method makes over an average marker position.  The more the better; 30–50x coverage is recommended for whole genome sequencing.  It was unclear at the time this blog was written what the coverage will be of AncestryHealth Plus’s next-gen sequencing.

The raw NGS data will be available to customers.

Plus is offered as part of a subscription plan, with an initial $49 fee and a subscription of $49 for 6 months. It’s unclear to me whether there are additional charges or whether one could conceivably cancel the membership after 6 months and get NGS data for only $98.

The Plus level will only be offered to existing AncestryDNA customers, with the same restrictions as Core.

 

Um, Hello?  Remember Genealogy?

As a genealogist, you may be asking yourself how this benefits your family history research.  That’s a great question!  No, you won’t be able to see which of your matches has done AncestryHealth, and you won’t be able to see what traits they carry.  The same goes for your own medical privacy, of course; no one else will be able to access your health results should you decide to go this route.

For genealogists, the benefit will be in the potential increase to the matching database.  Recall that new Core customers will need to do an AncestryDNA test first, and Plus members will have the option of being put into the matching database, too.  More matches are always a good thing!

 

Additional Information

14 thoughts on “AncestryHealth”

  1. Ho Hum to Ancestry……

    Just wish they would fix their navigation tools for those of us who actually work our dna accounts and trees. If they would only hire ONE programmer who has actually worked a tree…….

    Thank you for keeping us up-to-date.

    1. Perhaps you can describe your troubles with navigation so I can suggest a strategy. I work with trees and DNA all day, every day, and find their system easy to use.

      1. If you can help me with this, I will love you dearly, forever!

        This year they rolled out a new feature, whereby you can search a dead-end person in the tree of one of your matches going upstream, back in time, the same way I build a quick and dirty tree to find a tree match.

        Previously, in the top bar, DNA, they had a category, “Last match visited.” You could alway get back to the dna match you were presently working with and this was sticky until you exited from it.

        Now, after many minutes of search upstream, et al., there is no sticky to get back to the match you were working with unless you backspace ~10 times and oft times I am still thrown out of Ancestry and do not even remember the name of the match I was working with or how to retreive that person. Before, one could always go to the top bar and click on “last match visited” and voila there they were.

        Or maybe I want to leave Ancestry altogether for a few hours and then come back and work with my “last match visited”. Previously, it was alway there waiting for me.

        Bah, humbug!

    1. I do not recommend using a company that violates its own Terms of Service. Promethease said they would never sell user data to a third party “period” then sold their entire database.

    1. Good question! AncestryCore is cheaper than 23andMe Health + Ancestry, has fewer reported traits, but has more pro-active advice about what to do in you have a harmful marker. I think they will also have webinars and genetic counselors available for at-risk customers. AncestryHealth will continue to add traits and will provide even more health support. At least that’s my inference having not seen the final product in my own account yet.

  2. I noticed on the Ancestry homepage that an ethnicity update is coming soon, which is exciting as they haven’t had one in a while.
    Still waiting on the My Heritage ethnicity update…

  3. “…And if you did an earlier version of the AncestryDNA test, they will reprocess your stored sample as part of that $49 fee. (No, reprocessed data will not be incorporated into your AncestryDNA matching data.)”

    I am not interested in AncestryHealth, but I am interested and confused by the above statement. Does this suggest that a later version of the AncestryDNA test might provide additional matching data? And the only way to get the additional matching data is to retake the test? Any thoughts on whether that is worthwhile? What’s the cutoff date for earlier version vs. later version? Thanks very much, always enjoy your blog!

    1. Ancestry has been through at least one major chip revision and probably several minor ones. Two kits done on the same chip will have about 650,000 of SNP overlap, meaning the same SNPs were tested for both people, while two kits done on different chips will only have about 425,000 SNPs of overlap. The effect for closer cousins will be minimal, but we may well be missing distant cousin matches who tested on different chips from us.

  4. I got ancestry health for Christmas. Am I correct in reading that I first have to have ancestry to do the health one

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