Bioinformatics and its impact on clinical research methods. Findings from the Section on Bioinformatics.

Lang, E

OBJECTIVES To summarize current excellent research in the field of bioinformatics. METHOD Synopsis of the articles selected for the IMIA Yearbook 2006. RESULTS Current research in the field of bioinformatics clearly shows ongoing unification of experimental findings and clinical outcomes. Microarray data, gene sequences and clinical data are more and more perceived as different but related facets of one entity. Significant work is done in the area of text and data mining in order to bring together patient data and biochemical phenomena by means of ontologies. A strong trend in the clinical field is performance of exhaustive studies on DNA material derived from patients that suffer from diseases that are already known to be inherited. Examination of appropriate methods covers data and text mining, ontologies as well as machine learning and classification. CONCLUSIONS The best paper selection of articles on bioinformatics shows examples of excellent research on methods used for studying inherited diseases and their underlying genetic dispositions. Clinical studies, inclusion of experimental findings like microarray data, and of knowledge representation formats all lead to a better understanding the linkage between gene sequences, biological functions and clinical findings in the form of healthy state or physiological disorders.