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technology that facilitates the collection, analysis, and dissemination of huge
amounts of molecular and clinical data is essential to the advancement and
increased adoption of molecular medicine. caBigTM
and Molecular Medicine, NCI, NIH
3D-QSAR Three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationships:
Involves the analysis of the quantitative relationship between the
biological activity of a set of compounds and their three- dimensional properties
using statistical correlation methods. IUPAC Computational Drug
discovery informatics
applied clinical
informatics: See under clinical informatics
bioinformatics:
Store, manage, retrieve, analyze and integrate
vast amounts of genomic data being produced globally. Today embraces protein
structure analysis, gene and protein functional information, data from
patients, pre- clinical and clinical trials and
metabolic pathways of numerous
species. Bioinformatics
BioIT World Magazine
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new
trends in data generation, knowledge management, and information technology in
life sciences and drug development, including best practice case studies and
joint partner presentations relevant to the technologies, research, and
regulatory issues of life science, pharmaceutical, clinical and IT
professionals. BioIT World
Weekly Update: BioIT http://www.bio-itworldweekly.com/category/1/bio-it/
biomedical
informatics:
The science underlying the acquisition, maintenance,
retrieval, and application of biomedical knowledge and information to improve
patient care, medical education, and health sciences research. John Gennari,
Washington Univ. 2002 http://faculty.washington.edu/gennari/MedicalInformaticsDef.html bleeding edge: (General industry usage) Synonym for "cutting edge," with an added implication of the pioneer's vulnerability. Ex: "We're really on the bleeding
edge with this product. Hope it sells through." Being "edgy" is still, however, a desirable Microsoft quality.
Ken Barnes et. al, Microsoft Lexicon or Microspeak made easier, 1995-1998 http://www.cinepad.com/mslex.htm
Research
bottom-up: The classical reductionist approach to biology which
aims to examine the smallest units to gain insight into the larger ones.
Mendelian genetics, which looks at single genes, is a bottom- up approach.
Compare top- down. Research
cancerinformatics:
cheminformatics:
partnerships and collaborations to further drug discovery, open source
chemistry, recent advances in cheminformatics, modeling for safety, using
biological and chemical information to guide hit-to-lead phase and lead
optimization, and repurposing drugs by applying 21st century tools to find new
targets. BioIT
World Track 5 Cheminformatics April 2010 Boston MA Order CD
Cheminformatics
and chemoinformatics
are alternate spellings. Chemoinformatics originally predominated, but cheminformatics
now seems to be the most prevalent
spelling. See FAQ
question #3. Cheminformatics clinical informatics:
Integration of clinical workflow and business strategies of
any healthcare organization will spell success for the providers of the future.
Efficient exchange of data and information is essential for this merger, and
information technology is the tool with which to accomplish the consolidation.
Clinical Informatics is the practice evolving from this need in healthcare.
HIMSS Clinical informatics http://www.himss.org/ASP/topics_clinicalInformatics.asp
Clinical informatics contains
two major divisions. The first relates to all those aspects of clinical
informatics whose objective is the application of informatics and information
technology to deliver healthcare services. At times, this has also been referred
to as applied clinical informatics. Despite some variations, AMIA
considers informatics when used for healthcare delivery to be essentially the
same regardless of the health professional group involved whether dentist,
pharmacist, physician, nurse, or other health professional. The other branch relates to clinical
research informatics. Its primary objective is the use of informatics in the
discovery and management of new knowledge relating to health and disease. This
includes the management of the relevant knowledge base. Clinical research
informatics could be thought to encompass translational bioinformatics. However,
for the present at least, AMIA has chosen to consider it a separate division
since the communities of practitioners tend to be separate and since the field
is still in its infancy. Strategic
Plan, American Medical Informatics Association, 2007 http://www.amia.org/inside/stratplan/ The application of informatics
approaches to the clinical- evaluation phase of drug development. These
approaches can include clinical- trial simulations to improve trial design and
patient selection, as well as electronic capturing and storing of clinical data
and protocols. The goal is to reduce expenses and time to market. Clinical trials
complexity: Currently there are more than 30 different mathematical
descriptions of complexity. However we have yet to understand the mathematical
dependency relating the number of genes with organism complexity.
JC Venter et.
al Sequence of the Human Genome Science
291 (5507): 1347, Feb. 16, 2001 Narrower term:
biocomplexity Genomics computational
biology: Bioinformatics computational
biophysics: Activities of the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics
Group center on the structure and function of supramolecular systems in the
living cell, and on the development of new algorithms and efficient computing
tools for structural biology. The Resource brings the most advanced
molecular modeling, bioinformatics, and computational technologies to bear on
questions of biomedical relevance. Theoretical and Computational Biophysics
Group, Univ. of Illinois Urbana Champaign, About the Group http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Overview/intro.html Drug
discovery informatics data mining:
Exploration and analysis, by automatic or semi- automatic means, of large quantities of data in order to discover meaningful patterns or rules.
Berry, MJA, Data Mining Techniques for Marketing, Sales and Customer Support John Wiley & Sons, New York 1997 cited in Nature Genetics 21(15):
51- 55 ref 11, 1999 Narrower terms: affinity based data mining, comparative data mining, gene
expression database mining, genome database mining influence- based data mining, predictive data mining,
proteome database mining, time delay data mining,
trends analysis
data mining.
Increasingly people are talking about text mining (including of the life sciences
literature, as well as of sequence and structure databases).
Algorithms & data analysis databases:
Collections of data in machine- readable form, which
can be manipulated by software to appear in varying arrangements and subsets. Databases
& software Describes and provides links
to around 200 databases and about 30 software tools. Related terms: annotated
databases, curated databases, federated databases, integrated databases, non-
redundant databases, proprietary databases, redundant databases. Bioinformatics determinism (genetic):
Science's review of "The sequence of the human genome" (J. Craig Venter et al 291: 1304-1352 Feb. 16, 2001) concludes that a "paramount challenge awaits: public discussion of this information and its potential for improvement of personal health ... There are two fallacies to be avoided: determinism, the idea that all characteristics of the person are 'hard-wired" by the
genome; and
reductionism, the view that with complete knowledge of the
human genome sequence, it is only a matter of time before our understanding of
gene functions and interactions will provide a complete causal description of human variability."
Molecular
Medicine
digital
health: The healthcare environment will be profoundly
changed by the convergence of technology, and ready access to updated patient
information. This meeting will delve into issues of how
global connectivity and technology will drive a strategic vision of integrated
healthcare delivery systems and cover the use of combinatorial device technology
to integrate healthcare systems, and the novel connectivity of global electronic
medical record efforts. Clinical management of disease will be addressed through
the use of handheld and point-of-care devices. The value of real time patient
information to the clinical management team and the pharmaceutical researcher
will be leveraged while addressing the ethical and legal implications. Digital
Healthcare & Productivity eNewsletter Archive 2005-2008 electronic
health records: The
healthcare environment will be profoundly changed by the convergence of
technology, and ready access to updated patient information. The program will
cover the use of combinatorial device technology to integrate healthcare
systems, and the novel connectivity of global electronic medical record efforts.
Clinical management of disease will be addressed through the use of handheld and
point-of-care devices. The value of real time patient information to the
clinical management team and the pharmaceutical researcher will be leveraged
while addressing the ethical and legal implications. Emerging lessons:
Electronic Health Records, Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=5562&mode=2&holderDisplayURL=http://prodportallb.ahrq. electronic
prescribing:
Agency for Healthcare
Research & Quality, http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=5554&mode=2&holderDisplayURL=http://prodportal Clinical informatics
Gene OntologyTM GO: The goal of the Gene OntologyTM
Consortium
is to produce a dynamic controlled vocabulary that can be applied to all
eukaryotes even as knowledge of gene and protein roles in cells is accumulating
and changing. http://www.geneontology.org/
Participating Groups include Arabidopsis, C. elegans, Drosophila,
Saccharomyces and mouse. Functional
genomics Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ontology
genome informatics:
The Twelfth International Conference on Genome Informatics (GIW 2001) focuses on Genome Informatics, including, but not limited to, the following areas: genomic database, knowledge extraction from literature, knowledge discovery and
data mining from databases, structural
genomics, protein structure and function prediction,
proteome analysis, pathway analysis, functional
genomics, gene expression analysis, gene
network analysis, gene structure and function prediction, sequence analysis,
motif extraction and search, multiple alignment,
phylogenetic tree, linkage analysis program, systems for supporting experimental works
(mapping, sequencing, primer
design, etc.), high performance computing, simulation of biological system,
DNA computing, artificial life, etc. GIW 2001 homepage, Dec. 17-19,
2001, Tokyo, Japan http://giw.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/giw2001/
Genomics
Good
Informatics Practices
Guidance
Document (GIP): A newly drafted comprehensive body of information of
regulatory requirements in the form of existing (GLP, GMP, GCP and Part 11) and
currently used standards compiled in one reference guide for an IT system of a
life science or healthcare environment. http://www.lsit.org/LSITExecutiveSummaryFinal021111.pdf
health IT tools:
Agency
for Healthcare Research & Quality, http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=919&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=9&mode=2&in_h
in silico:
In a white
paper I wrote for the European Commission in 1988 I advocated the funding of
genome programs, and in particular the use of computers. In this endeavour I
coined "in silico" following "in vitro" and "in
vivo" I think that the first public use of the word is in the following
paper: A. Danchin, C. Médigue, O. Gascuel, H. Soldano, A. Hénaut, From
data banks to data bases. Res. Microbiol. (1991) 142: 913- 916. You
can find a developed account of this story in my book The
Delphic Boat, Harvard University Press, 2003, personal communication Antoine
Danchin, Institute Pasteur, 2003
Literally "in the computer" (as contrasted
with "in vitro" (in glass) or "in vivo" (in
life). Can be used to screen out compounds which are not druggable.
Drug
discovery informatics
informatics:
The study of the application of computer and statistical
techniques to the management of information. In genome projects, informatics
includes the development of methods to search databases quickly, to analyse
DNA sequence information, and to predict protein
sequence and structure
from DNA sequence data. ORD Office of Rare Diseases, NIH
glossary
There is no
universally accepted taxonomy for the major domains of informatics today. For
purposes of AMIA's education, member service, research programs and policy
initiatives, we recognize three domains. These domains include 1. Clinical
informatics (including healthcare, research and personal health management) 2.
Public health/population informatics 3. Translational bioinformatics Strategic
Plan, American Medical Informatics Association, 2007 http://www.amia.org/inside/stratplan/ Narrower terms: bioinformatics; cheminformatics; Computers
& computing glossary clinical informatics, molecular informatics,
research informatics; Drug
discovery & development pharmacoinformatics, pharmainformatics Proteomics
protein informatics Information management
& interpretation
information overload:
Biomedicine is in the middle of revolutionary
advances. Genome projects, microassay methods like DNA
chips, advanced
radiation sources for crystallography and other
instrumentation, as well
as new imaging methods, have exceeded all expectations, and in the process
have generated a dramatic information overload that requires new resources
for handling, analyzing and interpreting data. Delays in the exploitation
of the discoveries will be costly in terms of health benefits for individuals
and will adversely affect the economic edge of the country. Opportunities in Molecular Biomedicine in the Era of Teraflop
Computing: March 3 & 4, 1999, Rockville, MD, NIH Resource for Macromolecular
Modeling and Bioinformatics Beckman Institute for Advanced Science
and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign
"Information overload" is not an overstatement these days. One
of the biggest challenges is to deal with the tidal wave of data, filter out extraneous
noise and poor quality data, and assimilate and integrate information
on a previously unimagined scale. Information management
& interpretation information technology:
Plays a key role in helping organizations achieve profitable results and keep
competitive forces in check. With the completion of the draft sequence of the
human genome and the push for protein data analysis, the life sciences industry
is faced with the daunting task of creating computing infrastructures that
support a high level of data interpretation. Never before has the need for
significant computing power been so great. Cambridge
Healthtech Institute, IT and Informatics conference series IT
Infrastructure
interdisciplinary aspects of research:
Terminology
and ideas relevant to genomics comes from a wide variety of disciplines:
analytical chemistry,
artificial intelligence, biochemistry,
bioinformatics, biomechanics, biophysics,
biotechnology, cell biology, clinical
and research medicine, computer
sciences, developmental and structural biology, electrochemistry, electronics,
engineering, enzymology, epidemiology,
genetic engineering, imaging, immunology,
mathematics, microbiology, molecular
biology, optics, pharmacology, public health, statistics, toxicology, virology and aspects of
business, chaos theory, ethics and
law are all relevant.
Few people (if any) can be truly interdisciplinary and expert in all of these subjects.
Universities are struggling with the challenge of (and need to) build bridges
between departments. Companies are as well. We all need to learn more to participate in informed public debate.
Research
interoperability:
The ability of two or more systems or components to
exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE Standard Computer
Dictionary: A Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries. New York,
NY: 1990 Enabling heterogeneous databases to function in an integrated way, sometimes
refers to cross platform functionality and operability across relational,
object- oriented, and non- standard types of databases. Information
management & interpretation just in time information:
About 1,530,000 websites were found with this phrase by Google on
Feb 18, 2011 An increasing need as we are deluged with
information and data -- and still need time to reflect, discuss and think about what
all these means. Information management
& interpretation
life sciences informatics:
Informatics are
essential at every step of genomics-based drug discovery and development. The
commercial landscape of life sciences information technology has changed
dramatically in the last few years. Bioinformatics,
in particular, has gone through a dramatic boom/bust. While IT companies are
looking to the drug discovery and development arena as a new market opportunity,
pharmaceutical companies are faced with rising pressure to reduce (or at
least control) costs, and have a growing need for new informatics tools to help
manage the influx of data from genomics, and turn that data into tomorrow's
drugs. Key IT tools, such as high- performance computing, Web services, and
grids, are being used to improve the speed and efficiency of drug discovery and
development. True breakthroughs are still lacking, particularly in key areas
such as gene prediction, data mining, protein structure modeling and prediction,
and modeling of complex biological systems. However, most experts agree that IT
and bioinformatics are essential to reaching the improved productivity the
pharmaceutical industry craves. Information management &
interpretation
medical informatics:
The field of information science concerned with the analysis and dissemination of medical data through the application of computers to various aspects of health care and medicine.
MeSH, 1987 Clinical
& Medical informatics
metadata: Could elevate the
status of the web from machine- readable to something we might call machine-
understandable.
Metadata is "data about data" or specifically in our current context "data describing web resources." The distinction between
"data" and "metadata" is not an absolute one; it is a distinction created primarily by a particular application ("one application's
metadata is another application's data"). W3C, "Introduction to RDF
Metadata" http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-rdf-simple-intro Information about data that enables intelligent,
efficient access and management of data. … metadata is always less than the data.
Robyne M. Sumpter
“White paper on Data Management” Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, February 10, 1994] http://www.llnl.gov/liv_comp/metadata/papers/whitepaper-draft.html
Information management & interpretation molecular modeling:
A technique for the investigation of molecular
structures and properties using computational chemistry and graphical visualization
techniques in order to provide a plausible three- dimensional representation
under a given set of circumstances. IUPAC Medicinal Chemistry Drug
discovery informatics new paradigms:
While many advances are unlikely to be truly new paradigms, a few developments show signs of being more than incremental improvements. Roger Brent compares
microarrays to the microscope and telescope because they "enable observation of the previous unobservable" [transcripts expressed under different conditions in cells, tissues, and organisms]
R. Brent, "Functional genomics: learning to think about gene expression data" Current Biology 9: R338-R341, May
1999 This is no overstatement.
Research nonlinear:
Advances in genomic technologies are a mix of incremental
improvements to existing technologies (linear) and occasionally, a truly
new paradigm or breakthrough. Related terms: disruptive technologies,
emerging technologies and complex. Genomics
normalization:
A knotty area in any measurement process, because it
is here that imperfections in equipment and procedures are addressed. The
specifics of normalization evolve as a field matures since the process usually
gets better, and one’s understanding of the imperfections also gets better. In
the microarray field, even larger changes are occurring as robust statistical
methods are being adopted. Algorithms
& data analysis ontology: From the Greek onto "on being". Metaphysics,
nature and essence of existence. Oxford English Dictionary Narrower terms bio- ontology, Gene Ontology
TM, molecular
biology ontology Ontologies Open
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public health
informatics:
The systematic application
of information and computer sciences to public health practice, research, and
learning. It is the discipline that integrates public health with information
technology. The development of this field and dissemination of informatics
knowledge and expertise to public health professionals is the key to unlocking
the potential of information systems to improve the health of the nation. www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/cbm/phi2001.html
MeSH 2003 Molecular Medicine
semantic web: The
Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the Web defined and linked
in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for
automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications. In order
to make this vision a reality for the Web, supporting standards, technologies
and policies must be designed to enable machines to make more sense of the Web,
with the result of making the Web more useful for humans. Facilities and
technologies to put machine- understandable data on the Web are rapidly becoming
a high priority for many communities. For the Web to scale, programs must be
able to share and process data even when these programs have been designed
totally independently. The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a
place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by
people. W3C, Semantic Web Activity Statement, 2001 http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Activity
Ontologies semantics:
How the information [in a data file] should be interpreted by others. Russ
Altman "Challenges for Biomedical Informatics and Pharmacogenomics,
Stanford Medical Informatics, c.2001 http://bmir.stanford.edu/file_asset/index.php/91/BMIR-2001-0898.pdf
Related terms: controlled vocabularies, ontologies, semantic web, taxonomies
Information management &
interpretation
social informatics:
A serviceable working conception of "social informatics" is that it identifies a body of research that examines the social aspects of computerization. A more formal definition is "the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts."
... diversity of communication outlets and specialized terminologies makes it hard for many
non- specialists (and even specialists) to locate important studies. Rob Kling,
What is social informatics and why does it matter? D-Lib 5(1): Jan. 1999 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html
Information management &
interpretation
standards: Bioinformatics Bio-ontology Standards Group,
Data
Model Standards Group; Microarrays
data analysis, standards
taxonomies:
Frustrations with search engines and information retrieval
(and information overload) have led to increased
interest in specialized taxonomies. A form of controlled vocabulary,
with hierarchical relationships (broader terms, narrower terms) which provide additional
suggestions for browsing, as do lateral relationships (related terms) and
preferred terms. While there is theoretical interest in natural
language processing, a very small percentage of web search engine queries actually
use natural language processing successfully. See also FAQ
question #4 for more about taxonomies. Information management & interpretation
text mining: Usually,
"text mining" is used to indicate a text search technique. But, we
think of text mining as having more functions. Text mining technologies extract
more information than just picking up keywords from texts: facts, author's
intentions, their expectations, and their claims. This knowledge is helpful to
many applied tasks such as marketing, trend analysis, claim processing,
generating FAQ, and so on. Text Mining, TRL, IBM, 2000 http://www.trl.ibm.com/projects/s7710/tm/index_e.htm Competition in
the pharmaceutical industry has increasingly become based upon better
recognition and analysis of information, much of which is available as published
text. Information management & interpretation top-down: A systems approach, which looks at the big picture
and complexity. Genomics is essentially a top- down approach, the opposite
of a bottom- up approach. Our ways of thinking have been so profoundly
influenced by bottom- up, reductionist approaches that we are having to
learn to think in very different ways to begin to fully explore. XML eXtensible Markup Language :
The universal format for
structured documents and data on the Web W3C, "Extensible Markup Language
(XML)" 2002 http://www.w3.org/XML/
IT
Infrastructure
Bibliography
IUPAC definitions are reprinted with the permission of the International
Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
Emerging terminologies for emerging technologies
Suggestions? Comments? Questions? Mary Chitty mchitty@healthtech.com
Last revised
May 01, 2012
<%end if%>
Related glossaries include Algorithms
& data analysis, Bioinformatics,
Cheminformatics, Clinical
& Medical informatics Drug
discovery informatics Information
management & interpretation, IT
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