Pioneering initiative in Spain to train physicians and researchers in bioinformatics' techniques

Barcelona, October 8, 2009. About fifty physicians and researchers working in health and biomedicine will be formed in the Catalan Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences (ICCC), located in Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, in the knowledge of the main tools of bioinformatics and applied genomics that are currently used in the biomedical research.

The course is organized and funded by the Biomedical Research Center Network - Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red-Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y la Nutrición, CIBERobn), of the Carlos III Health Institute, and the National Institute of Bioinformatics (INB).

The seminar aims to synthesize along an approach to various topics in bioinformatics through the analysis of the results obtained with techniques used in functional genomics studies such as micro-arrays, chips containing thousands of DNA samples that allow the analysis of the entire human genome.

This seminar on the use of bioinformatics in applied genomics to clinical medicine is a pioneering initiative in Spain that tries to approach to specialist physicians who work in hospitals the complex analysis techniques used in genome, which can help them to interpret more easily the current scientific literature in this field and assess their degree of applicability in clinical practice. So far, this type of formal formation had been focused on research but not in clinical care.

More reported on this project