BioMedical Informatics

Rapid and radical changes in technology are creating transformational changes in the healthcare system.  For example, what was formerly a doctor-controlled system, in which information and care was given from the top down, has now changed to one in which the consumer-patient has  much more knowledge and input in health care decisions.  The desire of the patient to gain more knowledge and information about his or her disease consequently creates an environment in which the physician and patient, together, make treatment decisions.  Furthermore, the physician needs more data in order to create a treatment regimen best tailored for that specific patient.  The robust amounts of data required for personalized medicine are now being generated by the collective disciplines known as “omics” (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, etc.).

In the last few years alone, advances in the field of genomics have resulted in the sequencing of the entire genome of individual organisms, including yeast and fruit flies.  The world-renowned biologist and founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute, Craig Venter, published his own—and the first of its kind—personal genome in 2007.  The vast amount of information provided by this research is useful only if it can be stored in such way that makes it easy to retrieve and manipulate.  Creating these data storage and manipulation systems for information gained through scientific research (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, etc.) is the purview of the field of BioInformatics.  BioMedical Informatics is a multidisciplinary field, combining basic and applied research, as well as computational sciences and healthcare information. Within the broad arena of BioMedical Informatics, Biocytics™ is developing the infrastructure necessary for electronic data capture for clinical trials and standard patient visits, electronic medical and personal health records hosting, and genomic record storage.

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