This is life-saving. Your genes determine if common drugs—from blood thinners like warfarin to antidepressants like escitalopram—will work, do nothing, or cause severe side effects. Knowing this before a prescription can prevent emergency room visits.

Currently, private genomic checkups range from a few hundred dollars for ancestry and basic health traits, to over a thousand for clinical-grade whole exome sequencing.

The old model: Wait for symptoms, then treat.

A genomic checkup provides a "drug passport." It tells doctors which painkillers work, which antidepressants will cause side effects, and which blood thinners could be dangerous. It turns the trial-and-error approach of prescribing medication into a precise science.