EJBI - Volume 1 (2005), Issue 1 © 2005 EuroMISE s.r.o. Updating the BIOINFOMED Study: Recent Outstanding Developments in Biomedical Informatics Fernando Martin-Sanchez 1 , I. Hermosilla 1 , F. J. Vicente 1 1 Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Majadahonda, Madrid, España Summary: In December 2001, the European Commission promoted a Conference in which more than 400 experts analyzed the synergies arisen between Bioinformatics (BI), Medical Informatics (MI) and Neuroinformatics. In November 2002, and in order to contribute to the strategy of the European R&D; policy for the following decade in such areas, the White Paper of the BIOINFOMED project was presented at the international congress BIOINFORSALUD 2002 (Valencia, Spain). In the strategic document entrusted by the Commission, the relations established between BI and MI were analyzed, resulting in a new definition of the discipline of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) that aims to facilitate the developments of Genomic Medicine. To elaborate the White Paper, a committee of 30 international ex perts coordinated by the Institute of Health "Carlos III" (ISCIII) designed the agenda with 18 lines of research that corroborated the existing synergy. They pointed out those areas in which the efforts had to be prioritized. In this article, we update thi s study by highlighting recent outstanding developments in this field. The projects presented respond to a careful selection carried out among the numerous initiatives that have arisen in the three years passed between the publication of the White Paper and this article. Some of the projects analyzed in this paper are: the IT infrastructure for biobanks under the Public Population Project in Genomics (P3G) Consortium, a Network of Excellence (INFOBIOMED) in Biomedical Informatics constituted within the European Union Sixth Framework Program for Research and Technological Development, the initiative headed by HL7 to include genetic information in the electronic health record, the proposal of a Human Phenome Project, a Spanish Cooperative Research Thematic Network (INBIOMED) in Biomedical Informatics, the new National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBCs), funded by NIH, under the BISTI initiative and the projects related with the simulation and modeling of Human Physiology. Keywords: Biomedical Informatics, Bioinformatics, Medical Informatics, Neuroinformatics 1. Introduction On December 14th, 2001 (http://14dec2001.ramit.be), the Conference "Synergy between Research in Medical Informatics, Bioinformatics and Neuroinformatics" was organised in the Brussels under the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, by the Belgian Federal Ministries of Social Affairs and Public Health and the European Commission – Directorate General Information Society and Directorate General Research. In this meeting about 400 researchers, professors, institution leaders, and industrial representatives gathered to share their vision on the prospect of synergy between medical informatics (MI) and bioinformatics (BI) as well as on the processes required to achieve that goal. The Brussels Meeting was the kick-off point for the activities related to the EC IST BIOINFOMED Study. The aim of the project was to analyze the relationships and potential synergies between MI and BI. The goals of the project were the analysis of the state of the art in the area of the study, the proposal of an R&D agenda [1] and the identification of the key players as well as the dissemination of the study (http://bioinfomed.isciii.es). The study gave a general overview of the evolution of each of the disciplines to achieve a better understanding of the possibilities of the synergy between them. Historically, MI and BI have developed separately and only occasionally have researchers of both disciplines collaborated in the past. Although the roots of BI and MI are located in different application domains, these domains increasingly overlap. Results of research in molecular medicine will have an impact on clinical medicine. This shared application domain will provide a natural space to collaborate. Medicine will benefit from the achievements of biological research, and biology will benefit from the use of clinical data for research. The conclusion was that as the domains begin to overlap, both communities increasingly would share a common goal, a common context, for exploring collaboration. The results from our study crystallized in a White Paper that was presented in the International Congress BIOINFORSALUD held in Valencia (Spain) and in the HealthGrid Conference in 2003 in Lyon (France). The paper was published in a summarized version in February 2004 in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics [2]. Martin-Sanchez et al.: Updating the BIOINFOMED Study Croatia, en 2-8 en2