DecodeMe recently announced that 23andMe customers could migrate their data to the Decode analysis platform for free. However, Peter Aldhous at the New Scientist's Short Sharp Science blog says the platform has given "mangled" analyses. From his 23andMe data, the DecodeMe analysis told Aldhous had a 40 percent risk of developing Alzheimer's disease during his life. However, his own Decode data puts his risk at about 14 percent. When Aldous inquired, Decode told him that "the simple answer to your question is that 23andMe apparently modified their data format. When we prepared the upload, as a reference we used data sets that clearly didn't reflect changes in their format."
Daniel MacArthur adds that this is "a timely warning to everyone — both customers and companies — starting to move through the personal genomics space. The next few years will see a proliferation of data formats and interpretation services, and there will inevitably be errors made due to clashes like this one."