A deeply personal intervention is in the future for 500 Aetna employees at risk for diabetes and heart disease. Based on their genetic profiles and answers to an online survey, they’ll get personalized health coaching, nutrition advice and, Aetna hopes, the tools to steer clear of costly chronic illness.

The pilot program, commissioned by Aetna Innovation Labs and run by Toronto-based Newtopia, uses a saliva-based genetic test and online assessment to match each participant to a plan and coach for them to lower their risk factors for metabolic syndrome, a collection of conditions that raise the risks for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Participants will be sorted with respect to genes associated with body fat and obesity, appetite, and typical eating behaviors. Guided by each person’s personality and motivation profile, Newtopia’s coaches will help pilot participants achieve weight loss and exercise goals or provide opt-in offers for nutritional products, such as protein powders.

The program’s success will be judged by how much participants reduce their risk factors for metabolic syndrome. Each participant has from two to five common risk factors already, such as a large waistline, high blood pressure, or high fasting blood sugar.

Some early participants at Aetna have lost more than 30 pounds already while vetting the program, and Aetna Innovation Labs Managing Director Adam Scott says that data from 5,000 people Newtopia has tested the program with so far have maintained their health gains beyond three months, a success that Aetna is keen to study.

“More than just identifying individuals at risk for metabolic syndrome, it’s important to have an intervention program that is engaging and sustainable,” says Scott. To measure that, Aetna will be looking for engagement and clinically relevant weight loss, he says.

Engagement will be measured in terms of how many people sign up for the program and remain in it, along with evaluations of the number of coaching sessions participants use, the number of times they log their eating on the program’s web site, and the number of times they log and interact with data from activity trackers, such as wireless pedometers. Aetna is seeking to see if participants can lose at least 7 percent or more of their body weight in the program.

Newtopia’s integrated, high-touch approach could be an effective intervention for people who have found other, less personalized programs unsuccessful. It’s cost is higher than a simple health app, but Aetna believe the investment will be worthwhile if it can prevent the onset of high-cost, chronic conditions. “It’s so important to get to people before the onset of full-blown metabolic syndrome that it’s worth it,” says Aetna’s Scott.

Aetna Innovation Labs has been working on metabolic syndrome for more than a year, working to develop models for prediction with GNS Healthcare, and looking at its own data and customer data to find risk factors.

If the Newtopia program is successful, Scott says there will be opportunities to build upon that success in another, bigger pilot, possibly through an offering of Newtopia’s service to Aetna’s employer customers.

Whether people are willing to part with their DNA for better health guidance remains an open question. So far, Aetna hasn’t had any internal pushback, Scott says, and Aetna won’t receive the results of Newtopia’s genetic testing, possibly allaying some people’s concerns. While financial and fitness coaching services have shown consumers ready and willing to give up personal data for guidance, it remains unclear how willing they will be to share their genetic information.