Biomedical informatics education for capacity building in developing countries

Abstract

Biomedical informatics is widely recognised as the defining scientific endeavour of the twenty-first century with profound impacts throughout our societies and economies. It provides the potential to achieve the desirable objectives of lessening poverty and disease burden in the developing nations. But the lack of biomedical informatics education and research infrastructure in the developing countries remains a major barrier both to the development of biomedical informatics as a discipline and to the sustainability of the implemented solutions of any domestically or externally financed pilot projects in wealth and healthcare development. This paper puts forth some important components that would constitute a science based, long-term, sustainable biomedical informatics education, training and research policy framework. These components are what are already incorporated into similar such policy frameworks in the developed nations and some of the emergent economies in the developing nations as well.