Securing and Documenting Cancer Family History in the Age of the Electronic Medical Record

Family health history is one of the least expensive, most useful, and most underused methods available to conduct assessments of the genetic aspect of a condition or to target the need for a genetic evaluation. This article introduces to the surgical oncologist the reason and process of collecting family history information. As medical records shift from paper to electronic formats, pedigree drawings are not readily available within the electronic health records. International efforts are underway to develop searchable, updatable, and interoperable formats that can collect family history information to inform clinical decision support for genetic risk assessment.