Biomedical Informatics: The Key to Translational Research
 
  Prof. Joyce C. Niland
City of Hope National Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA.

Abstract:

The field of biomedical informatics lies at the intersection between computer science, molecular medicine, and human biology.  Recent and ongoing advances in all three of these disciplines make the blending of these areas extremely powerful.  Applying biomedical informatics in support of translational research is the key to unlocking new scientific discoveries for the screening, prevention, detection, and cure of human disease.  The emergence of the human genome makes the area of biomedical informatics all the more critical, to manage the vast quantities of information arising from this achievement.  However only until the genomic data can be merged with the full human biology, or “phenomic” data, will true progress be made.  Yet capturing and integrating data about the human biology can be an even more daunting task than encoding the elegantly simple genomic information. The application of biomedical informatics to medical research will be presented, along with several crucial emerging international standards with respect to data representation and data exchange.  Approval and adoption of these standards worldwide will enable and speed new biomedical discoveries, and greatly facilitate the ability to rapidly launch successful multi-site international collaborative research studies.

Keywords:

Informatics, Biomedical Research, Genotype-Phenotype Analyses, Translational Research