Quoiden’s Origin Story: Building Hope Through Early Detection

Quoiden began with a loss no family should experience.

Bain was only seven years old when a rare genetic disorder - ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency—took his life. His death was sudden, devastating, and preventable. Like so many rare diseases, OTC deficiency had gone undiagnosed, hidden quietly within the family tree.

In the months that followed, Bain’s family sought to understand why this had happened—and how to prevent it from happening again. Working with a team of genetic genealogists, they traced their ancestry back through generations, uncovering a pattern no one had seen before. By mapping the family tree, they revealed more than 1,200 relatives who were potentially at risk—sixteen times more than originally identified.

A Discovery With Lifesaving Potential

This breakthrough showed that genealogy isn’t just about where we come from - it can also reveal how health conditions pass silently through generations. The insight was clear: by combining family history with genetics, it’s possible to identify those at risk long before symptoms appear, giving families the chance to seek testing, counseling, and care.

Motivated by Bain’s memory, Allison Jones - a pharmacist and Quoiden’s founder - set out to scale this discovery into a secure, consent-driven platform that could help other families. Quoiden empowers users to privately build health-based family trees, uncover hidden risks, access no-cost genetic testing, and, when appropriate, connect with clinical research and emerging therapies.

What began as one family’s search for answers has become a mission to save lives. Quoiden stands as a bridge between science and compassion—helping families find the knowledge, care, and hope they need to change the story for generations to come.