Bioinformatics and medical informatics are both rapidly advancing fields. Advances in molecular biology, the starting point for bioinformatics, demand that it broaden its domain to the biology of cells, tissues, organs, organisms and populations. Within medicine, increasing understanding of the molecular basis of disease, and the effect of genotype on disease propensity and treatment efficacy, create an opportunity for convergence between the disciplines.
There are emerging proofs of concept of the clinical importance of biological and genetic information. We are witnessing the adoption of biological and/or genetic information into informatics systems for clinical practice (e.g. in functional imaging, electronic patient records and especially clinical trials). We are furthermore witnessing a growing recognition of the importance of biomedical informatics integration technologies and platforms to enable the integration of bioinformatics and medical informatics information. This is particularly important in the area of semantic interoperability and ontologies in biomedicine which provide a structure for the organisation and sharing of knowledge between the domain of medicine, biology and genetics.
The objectives of the SYMBIOmatics SSA are to stimulate these developments and seek to identify and exploit synergies between bioinformatics and medical informatics as well as identifying addressable challenges for the medium term future.
Specifically to:
- Document state of the art activities in Biomedical Informatics in the EU member states
- Identify potential research challenges and opportunities (visions).
- Prioritise these according to (i) appropriateness to fund at an EU level; (ii) likelihood of strong intermediate results and (iii) industry commitment/validation.
- Summarise and make recommendations for the prioritised research actions to be taken into account in future European Commission funding programmes.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.symbiomatics.org
Project co-ordinator:
Graham Cameron (associate director, EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute)
Partners:
- Institute of Health "Carlos III" (ES)
- Ministry of Education and Science (ES)
- Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (GR)
- University of Genoa (IT)
- Institute of Biomedical Technologies (IT)
- Erasmus Medical Center (NL)
- INSERM (FR)
- Scientific Generics Ltd (UK)
- Ipsos-UK Ltd (UK)
Timetable: from 05/05 to 11/06
Total cost: 550.000,00
EC funding: 550.000,00
Instrument: SSA
Project Identifier: IST-2004-015862