The San Diego Blood Bank (SDBB) and digital health data company Seqster today launched an innovative collaboration that will provide the more than 50,000 SDBB donors with access to all of their health data free-of-charge in one location.
The program is the first of its kind that allows blood donors to see and share an integrated view of their health data from multiple, disparate sources including their electronic medical record (EMR), wearables data, and genomics data. The partnership will also allow the donors to place their health data in a legal trust to share with family members now and in the future.
The newest offering from SDBB builds on the company's reputation as an innovator. Three years ago, 70 blood donors had the opportunity to have their DNA sequenced and to meet with a genetic counselor to better understand their genetic make-up and to potentially make health decisions based on this information.
“The health of our blood donors is critical to us at SDBB,” said David Wellis, Ph.D., CEO. “Blood donors provide local hospitals and patients a precious resource that saves lives. Our objective is to ensure our donors are well taken care of. This includes providing access to the most cutting-edge tools to maintain their own health. Our entire community’s wellness is our priority.”
Later this year, blood donors can access their health data on Seqster platform which can securely access patient data from thousands of health systems and medical offices across the country. The platform integrates this data with data from wearable devices like FitBits, as well as genomic data that patients may have including from services like 23andMe and Ancestry.com.
“What we are doing with the San Diego Blood Bank is a mini All of Us,” said Ardy Arianpour, CEO of Seqster, of the NIH-sponsored precision medicine initiative that launched over the weekend, with the aim of collecting health and genomic information from 1 million Americans. “If you are blood donor, you can now view all of your health data in once place. It’s a fantastic partnership: We are giving back to the community, and the community is giving back to us.”
The Seqster platform took two years to develop, Arianpour told Clinical OMICs. He calls it the first consumer-driven platform of its kind that integrates and normalizes the data from different sources. The company name is pronounced “seek-ster” and refers to people who are proactively interested in the implications that all of their health data has not only for them, but potentially for other family members who may share traits.
“Seqsters are people who are very motivated to look at their health data in a way that hasn’t been available before,” Arianpour explained. “I think we are on the cusp of something much bigger than anticipated by accidently solving this interoperability problem across multiple platforms and multi-source data.”
Seqster went live with its product offering earlier this year and is actively looking to forge additional partnerships that will help the company empower individuals to take control of their health data.
