Defining the Role of Bioinformatician

Bioinformaticians are an increasingly important element of the healthcare workforce. As demand for their expertise grows, healthcare commissioners and providers need to consider how best to recruit, train, integrate, and manage Bioinformaticians to ensure UK health services can realize the benefits of the ‘big data’ revolution.

Bioinformatics 

An interdisciplinary field which combines concepts and knowledge from computer science, statistics and bio sciences in order to manage, mine, visualize and analyse biological and medical data. 

Clinical bioinformatics  

The clinical application of bioinformatics associated sciences and tools to inform the medical management of human disease.

Transnational Bioinformatics 

The development and application of bioinformatics techniques to optimize the transformation of data (basic molecular, genetic, cellular, and clinical) into clinical products or health implications.3,4

Health (medical) bioinformatics Specifically, the application of bioinformatics knowledge and tools to enable the collection and management of data for the delivery of health services.

A professional body?

As bioinformatic input has increasing impact on health service delivery, now is the time for a review of the standards of competence, ethics, conduct, and training needed for bioinformaticians in the health services. Currently there is no recognized professional group for bioinformaticians, nor a requirement for their professional registration. Consideration should be given to the desirability of professional registration and the establishment of a specialist group to determine standards of competency, ethics, conduct and training to ensure quality of services.