Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics: Collaborations on the Road to Genomic Medicine?
- Victor Maojo, MD, PhD,
- Casimir A Kulikowski, PhD
- Affiliations of the authors: Medical Informatics Group, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain (VM); Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (CAK) USA
- Correspondence and reprints: Victor Maojo, MD, PhD, Director, Medical Informatics Group, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, School of Computer Science, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Boadilla del Monte, 28660 Madrid, Spain; e-mail: <vmaojo{at}fi.upm.es>.
- Received 6 December 2002
- Accepted 29 January 2003
Abstract
In this report, the authors compare and contrast medical informatics (MI) and bioinformatics (BI) and provide a viewpoint on their complementarities and potential for collaboration in various subfields. The authors compare MI and BI along several dimensions, including: (1) historical development of the disciplines, (2) their scientific foundations, (3) data quality and analysis, (4) integration of knowledge and databases, (5) informatics tools to support practice, (6) informatics methods to support research (signal processing, imaging and vision, and computational modeling, (7) professional and patient continuing education, and (8) education and training. It is pointed out that, while the two disciplines differ in their histories, scientific foundations, and methodologic approaches to research in various areas, they nevertheless share methods and tools, which provides a basis for exchange of experience in their different applications. MI expertise in developing health care applications and the strength of BI in biological “discovery science” complement each other well. The new field of biomedical informatics (BMI) holds great promise for developing informatics methods that will be crucial in the development of genomic medicine. The future of BMI will be influenced strongly by whether significant advances in clinical practice and biomedical research come about from separate efforts in MI and BI, or from emerging, hybrid informatics subdisciplines at their interface.
Footnotes
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The authors thank Dr. Fernando Martin Sanchez and Dr. Ilias Iakovidis for many useful discussions on parts of the material presented in this article and the constructive suggestions from the JAMIA reviewers on the manuscript. Part of this work was supported by funding from the EC BIOINFOMED study and the INBIOMED project, Ministry of Health, Spain.
