MD Anderson KinSys

The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center selected Dynasty to develop the prototype for KinSys, a database management system and application to conduct cancer genetics studies.

Determining the family history of a disease is the first step in assessing genetic risk for a hereditary syndrome. Since an extensive family history can be quite large, and written data about the family history can extend over numerous pages, a visual representation (pedigree or family tree) of these data facilitates an easier evaluation of a family by the clinician.

Family history tracking programs, such as Kinsys, are providing practitioners with the tools to create readable and consistent pedigrees (family trees), with an improved ability to see information at a family level, enabling the practitioner to make better informed clinical decisions regarding patient care.

It combines the functionality of a relational database with data storage, manipulation, and retrieval, and a pedigree drawing component. Kinsys allows data entry through direct drawing and manipulation of a pedigree.

Kinsys is currently being redesigned to improve the functionality and usability employing human factors techniques. This is important because it will lead to a system that is easier to use and learn, will decrease the chance of errors, and will increase productivity and user satisfaction.

Since Kinsys was initially designed for conducting only cancer genetics studies, it is further being redesigned so that it can be used with any genetic disease. Generalizing Kinsys to any genetic disease is important because it increases the utility and potential user-base (and hence potential market share) of the program.