Project acronym: SYMBIOmatics

Coordination: European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany

Project partners:

The European Bioinformatics Institute, UK  Scientific Generics Ltd, UK The Ministry of Education and Science, Spain FORTH, The Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas, Greece University of Genoa, Department of Communication Computer and System Sciences, Italy ITB, The Institute of Biomedical Technologies, Italy Erasmus Medical School, The Netherlands ISCIII, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain INSERM, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, France

ICT Technological Area: 2.10. Databases, Database management, Data Mining, 2.12. Imaging, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, 2.13. Information Technology/Informatics, 3.1. Software for health

Sectors of ICT Implementation: 6.1. Pharmaceuticals, 6.3. Biomedical

Project duration: 18 months

Project start: 01/05/2005

EC funding: 0.55 M EUR

Project aim:
Bioinformatics and medical informatics are both rapidly advancing fields. Advances in molecular biology, the home of bioinformatics, demand that it reach out 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 a convergence between the disciplines. This project is an information gathering and dissemination activity which will stimulate these developments and exploit the synergy between bio- and medical informatics.

A collaboration between national and international policy-making organisations will document the state-of-the-art in biomedical informatics and identify areas of maximum opportunity. This will be done by systematically identifying European experts (using the so-called "snowball" methodology) and collecting their insights.Initially this will be done through an open-ended consultation whose output will be used to create an internet survey from which results will be summarised and presented. Simultaneously, bibliometric and data-mining methods will identify and analyse the content of the relevant scientific literature. Areas of opportunity will be extracted from the resulting information, and meetings of the contributors and experts will carefully prioritise these. A report summarising the findings will provide well-judged input to future European scientific and funding policy. A concluding meeting will present these findings for discussion by a wider community of bio- and medical informaticians.

Contacts and Website:
http://www.symbiomatics.org/
symbiomatics@ebi.ac.uk