Forget about discovering royalty or relations to celebrities through genealogy research: Exploring your family lineage could be a lifesaver.

Doctors have long touted investigating your family medical history as a key way to prevent illnesses and other conditions that have plagued your ancestors. Yet a recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that less than a third of Americans have researched their own medical history… even though most realize the benefits of having that information handy.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently made mining for medical maladies easier by releasing software to help compile ancestral health data.

The free computer program “My Family Health Portrait” is now available from the HHS Web site. After entering health-related information about relatives, the software creates a diagnostic family tree that patients and their doctors can use to easily trace high-risk conditions. It’s part of a joint venture between the U.S. Surgeon General’s Family History Initiative and numerous HHS agencies that encourages family members to discuss health history.

Recent discoveries about the human genome make this information more valuable than ever.

Medical researchers hope that familial medical studies, coupled with modern genetic research, can help discover why disease-causing DNA “glitches” happen in the first place. One project goal? The development of personalized disease-prevention plans.

These reports, while no crystal ball, would allow physicians to identify particularly threatening conditions… and give a patient invaluable foresight.