BOSTON – The government today introduced an updated version of a Web-based family health history tool to encourage more Americans to collect information about their family's health history.

The online tool asks users a series of questions about their history and the family's history of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, breast cancer, colon cancer and ovarian cancer. Users also can provide information on other diseases they or their family members might have. The tool then creates a chart of the user's family health history. Users can save their family history information to their own computer, share it with family members or print it out for a doctor.

"Knowing your family health history can save your life," Francis Collins, MD, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, told an audience at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The information users enter is secure and is not made available to anyone else or collected in any way, Collins said.

A previous version of the tool had to be downloaded to the user's computer and was only compatible with the Microsoft Windows operating system. The new tool is compatible with other operating systems, including the Macintosh, and is available in both English and Spanish. Last year, more than 360,000 copies of the family health history were downloaded, Collins said.

Future versions of the tool could flag certain disease patterns that users might want to bring to a physician's attention. In addition, the information in the online health history could eventually be used to populate an electronic medical record, according to Collins.

In the meantime, Brigham and Women's will promote the tool to its 12,000 employees, making it the first U.S. employer to actively promote the online tool. The hospital will place computer kiosks throughout the facility and make paper copies of the histories available for employees to voluntarily fill out. Researchers will then ask whether users changed their health behaviors based on the health history.

Officials involved with the project say primary care physicians often don't have the time to take down a patient's family medical history. Of those who do, many don't know the right questions to ask. The online health history allows patients to take control, project leaders say.

"Its one of the most powerful ways to personalize your medical care," Collins said.