Pedigree Update: Single-Parent Pedigrees

In a new update, accurately represent families in the clinic with pedigree charts that support single-parent families alongside more traditional family structures.

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KRISTA PACE

Published on April 24, 2025

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Single-Parent Pedigrees

Accurate, concise and clear representations of family structures is a crucial element for genetic professionals. Historically, pedigree tools have defaulted to representing every child with a pair of parents, even when that doesn’t represent the reality for that family.

PhenoTips is excited to introduce the latest piece of our pedigree modernization plan: the ability to represent single-parent relationships on pedigree charts. This update will help eliminate the clutter of unnecessary nodes, better reflect diverse family structures, and remove the need to create placeholder partners when family history is unknown.

Why Single-Parent Families?

We understand that family structures are complex, and forcing our users to follow strict models can inadvertently:

  • introduce confusion by implying partnerships that don’t exist
  • force users to create fictitious partners even when no information is available
  • fail to represent real-world situations, especially when sharing a pedigree with patients

Building on our launch of gender-inclusive pedigrees, allowing the representation of single parents moves us towards a more accurate view of modern family structures and reproductive genetics, including improvements to display donor conceptions.

"This update will help eliminate the clutter of unnecessary nodes, better reflect diverse family structures, and remove the need to create placeholder partners when family history is unknown."

What’s New

With our Single Parent Pedigree release, users will now be able to:

  • Choose between single-parent or partner-based relationships when adding parents to a child. You can now represent children with a single parent alongside children conceived from a partnership.
An image of a PhenoTips pedigree chart with a proband who has a single mother, and a son with no indicated partner, as well as a daughter with an identified male partner.

You can now represent children with a single parent alongside children conceived from a partnership.

  • Avoid placeholder partners – no longer will you be forced to add unknown individuals just because the tool requires it

How It Works

When adding parents to a pedigree, you’ll now see options to select between creating partners or a single parent of any sex and gender.

Insider Tip: hovering over any of the icons will provide you with helper text as well to let you know what the symbols mean!

A labeled diagraom showing the different options for creating a parent, or set of parents (partners), in PhenoTips' pedigree chart software.

When adding parents to a pedigree, you’ll now see options to select between creating partners or a single parent of any sex and gender.

Why It Matters

At PhenoTips, it is our mission to support genetic professionals with tools that enhance and digitize their practice. We believe going digital should mean gaining new tools and abilities, not losing access to things easily accommodated with traditional pen and paper.

As your practice evolves, so will PhenoTips. This means we will continue to update our software to accurately reflect the patients and families of today.

But it’s your workflow, not ours. If you have any feedback or questions related to the single-parent pedigree update, please reach out to us at hello@phenotips.com.

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