A team at Ann Arbor-based Michigan Medicine has developed an online tool to encourage genetic screening among family members of cancer patients and survivors.
The tool — called Genetic Information and Family Testing or GIFT — educates users on genetic testing and encourages them to invite first- and second-degree relatives to the site.
“While [cancer] patients are supported through their genetic testing, they get little clinical guidance on how to talk about it with their family,” Allison Kurian, MD, professor of medicine and of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a March 25 news release from Michigan Medicine.
Findings from a Michigan Medicine-led clinical trial of the tool were published March 24 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Here are five things to know from the trial:
- Researchers enrolled 414 cancer survivors who carried a pathogenic variant.
- About one in five trial participants invited their relatives to the site and about one in three of those invited relatives enrolled in the trial.
- Of the relatives who enrolled in the trial, 91.3% ordered genetic testing.
- Participants who were offered free testing were twice as likely to order genetic testing.
- The Michigan Medicine research team is working to personalize and improve the tool with an AI assistant.
Read the full study here.
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