EDITORIAL
Switzerland is home to an array of research institutes involved in many different fields of science. Bioinformatics is particular in that it is not only a scientific field per se but also a discipline, which is gradually becoming the backbone of the life sciences as a whole. With the number of SIB groups steadily growing – 65 groups today – and the increasing role of bioinformatics in today’s major scientific advances, SIB’s scope of action is expanding both on the national and the international level.
An important development in bioinformatics is its extension to the clinical environment. SIB therefore created a group to support clinical bioinformatics in the university hospitals across the country and its first diagnostic tool has already been installed. In the same vein, SIB is preparing for the official start of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) initiative; the Institute will be collaborating with experts in the field of medical informatics to define the strategy and guidelines for data production, storage, interoperability and exchange in Switzerland.
At the European level, SIB is the Swiss node of ELIXIR – the pan-European bioinformatics programme whose mission is to build a sustainable European infrastructure for biological information.
We are proud of SIB’s ever-expanding role in the world of bioinformatics, and we hope you will enjoy reading all about it in this issue of our newsletter.
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