I already have a DNA File. Do I need a SelfDecode kit?
People often ask us whether they should buy a DNA kit from SelfDecode or upload an existing one from another company.
At first, we used to tell people to upload their own DNA file if they already have one.
But since we've upgraded our system, we decided to do some internal testing to compare how accurate the results are from our own chip compared to those used by others.
It turns out, that getting a kit from SelfDecode is more accurate - for a few reasons.
First, when you get your results back from another company, they don't send you all of your data, so it's harder for our system to analyze.
When the data comes back from a lab, the raw data has to go through a pipeline to transform it into a readable format.
When you download a file from another service, it leaves out a lot of the data that came from the lab.
The data that is missing is sometimes quite important and can make the predictions less accurate.
In addition, our pipelines for predicting 83M variants are particularly suited for our chip.
Second, the quality of the sequencing can change quite a lot, even within the same lab. For example, in the lab we use, the company can select what error rate should be allowed. So even 2 companies using the same lab and the same genotyping machine can have different quality levels.
Everything we do is optimized for the chip we sell.
If you already do have a DNA file and don't want to spend additional money to get your DNA sequenced again, you will still get way better results uploading your file to SelfDecode than to any other company.
But, if you still haven't done a DNA test, then we strongly recommend buying a SelfDecode Kit for the best health insights and results.
If you have already uploaded a DNA file to your SelfDecode account, and you would like to have your DNA tested with us, please email support@selfdecode.com and we will be happy to assist you with purchasing a SelfDecode kit.