Why Study Bioinformatics?

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that harness the quantitative power of modern data science to solve biological and medical problems and develop innovative digital healthcare solutions. This field is increasingly of high demand globally in research, hospital and industry.

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The field has evolved from mostly focusing on molecular sequence and structural analysis twenty years ago, to now encompassing a wide range of high impact biomedical big data applications, including genomics, precision medicine, systems biology, digital and mobile health technology, artificial intelligence (AI) analysis of medical imaging data, electronic health record analysis, and global health & epidemiology.

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Some examples of tasks that graduates would be able to do include:

• Interpreting genetic testing results from patients and reporting findings to help clinicians to make treatment decisions.

• Identify patterns in epidemic outbreak based electronic records of passengers on public transport in order to guide pandemic prevention strategies.

• Predicting how novel compounds interact with proteins to help identify new targeted therapies for diseases.

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Read more about the development of bioinformatics in Hong Kong in this news article by Dr Joshua Ho in the Health Column of am730 (Chinese only).

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