Findings from the Section on Bioinformatics and Translational Informatics

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To summarize excellent current research and propose a selection of best papers published in 2015 in the field of Bioinformatics and Translational Informatics with application in the health domain and clinical care. METHOD: We provide a synopsis of the articles selected for the IMIA Yearbook 2016, from which we attempt to derive a synthetic overview of current and future activities in the field. As last year, a first step of selection was performed by querying MEDLINE with a list of MeSH descriptors completed by a list of terms adapted to the section. Each section editor has evaluated separately the set of 1,566 articles and the evaluation results were merged for retaining 14 articles for peer-review. RESULTS: The selection and evaluation process of this Yearbook's section on Bioinformatics and Translational Informatics yielded four excellent articles focusing this year on data management of large-scale datasets and genomic medicine that are mainly new method-based papers. Three articles explore the high potential of the re-analysis of previously collected data, here from The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA) and one article presents an original analysis of genomic data from sub-Saharan Africa populations. CONCLUSIONS: The current research activities in Bioinformatics and Translational Informatics with application in the health domain continues to explore new algorithms and statistical models to manage and interpret large-scale genomic datasets. From population wide genome sequencing for cataloging genomic variants to the comprehension of functional impact on pathways and molecular interactions regarding a given pathology, making sense of large genomic data requires a necessary effort to address the issue of clinical translation for precise diagnostic and personalized medicine.