NEW YORK – Consumer genetic testing company Ancestry has made a $1 million educational grant to UpToDate so the latter can develop a system to help physicians interpret and act on genetic test results.
Ancestry CEO Margo Georgiadis announced the grant Tuesday evening during a keynote at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas.
UpToDate, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based subsidiary of Wolters Kluwer that produces evidence-based information for clinical decision support systems, will use the grant to create content to assist physicians in advising their patients. UpToDate and Ancestry expect to have the content available through both companies' portals starting in early 2020.
Ancestry will deliver the information through its recently launched AncestryHealth professional-grade testing service.
"As we scale our AncestryHealth services to millions of consumers, we are committed to ensuring broad availability of educational materials to support healthcare providers who are engaging with patients about genetic risks and the proactive steps they can take to improve health outcomes," Georgiadis said. "Ancestry’s educational grant to UpToDate is an important step to accelerate wide availability of this important information for physicians."
Peter Bonis, chief medical officer for clinical effectiveness in Wolters Kluwer's health division, said in a statement that the grant "enables UpToDate to determine and develop new content with editorial independence, which remains a critical component of our editorial policy."