Data science and informatics: when it comes to biomedical data, is there a real distinction?

Abstract

Recent initiatives from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; http://bd2k.nih.gov) and other federal agencies emphasize that health-relevant big data present unique challenges. Professionals who specialize in handling these challenges, that is, data scientists, are in very high demand in all disciplines. Although the name ‘data scientist’ could imply a significant difference between those who handle data versus those who handle information (ie, processed data), when biomedical, healthcare, and health behavioral data are concerned, there is no distinction: biomedical informatics is biomedical data science. It is great to see that agencies now recognize the value of our discipline and rightfully place it at the top of their priority list. An increasing number of academic institutions are following suit. There are many reasons why the awareness of biomedical informatics as a scientific discipline has raised in the past few years. Biomedical and behavioral research have been deeply impacted by technologies that enable rapid and relatively inexpensive data collection. New collection sources that generate big data are becoming more and more important and are beginning to merge with more traditional biomedical data sources …