Medical informatics: transition from data acquisition to data analysis by means of bioinformatics tools and resources

Medical informatics has shifted its focus from acquisition and storage of healthcare data by integrating computational, informational, cognitive and organisational sciences to semantic analysis of the data for problem solving and clinical decision-making. In this transition, bioinformatics tools and resources are the most appropriate means to improve the analysis, as major biological databases are now containing clinical data alongside genomics, proteomics and other biological data. This paper briefly reviews bioinformatics tools and resources and then discusses their applications in analysing clinical data for diagnostics.