Bioinformatics involves the development and application in the biological (especially genomic) sciences of novel informatics techniques. It is a young, active discipline with its own professional societies, meetings and scientific journals, which are based on a specific research agenda and have made a critical contribution to the achievements of human and other genome projects. MI, on the other hand, is a more developed field that has pioneered the development and application of clinical medicine and biomedical science informatics approaches, but has recently found itself increasingly challenged by the advent of BI. For planning the future of both disciplines, a contrast between BI and MI may provide valuable insights. Within BI, some experts have proposed that, considering their experience in dealing with the vast amounts of experimental data, researchers from other disciplines, such as physicists or statisticians, should primarily contribute to BI assignments. But, perhaps the most fruitful partnerships are with MI's more proximal discipline, which for the last 30 years has dealt with problems of structuring complicated and vast volumes of biomedical data and information. In order to examine early deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and protein sequence data and, later, the macromolecular structural and functional data needed for genomic discovery, bioinformatics experienced a more incremental growth that emerged from the individual efforts of researchers. In computer biology, BI was able to draw on work involving a large number of mathematically focused researchers and theoreticians. Following Medline's ground-breaking example, work on digital medical libraries and the creation of many reference texts and online biomedical knowledge databases have revolutionized the routine way in which individuals can access biomedical literature and make direct use of it. BI has only recently become concerned with issues in medical practice, as knowledge on microarray gene expression is increasingly available for use in the medical record. Concerns regarding the possible exploitation of genetic data highlight the importance of developing new combined BMI approaches to ensure their confidentiality by aggregating anonymized data without sacrificing the ability to learn about the genetic components of diseases. Dramatic shifts in methodological and cognitive approaches to clinical care would have to take place in order for a major shift to occur in medicine based on genomics.

Media Contact:

Allison Grey

Journal Manager

Journal of Clinical chemistry and Laboratory Medicine

Email: clinchem@longdomjournal.org