Víctor Maojo – författare

Thisyear,the5thInternationalSymposiumonMedicalDataAnalysishasexperimented an apparently slight modi?cation. The word "biological" has been added to the title of the conferences. The motivation for this shift goes beyond the wish to attract a diff- ent kind of professional. It is linked to recent trends to produce a shift within various biomedical areas towards genomics-based research and practice. For instance, medical informaticsandbioinformaticsarebeinglinkedina synergicareadenominatedbiom- ical informatics.Similarly,patient careis beingimproved,leadingto conceptsandareas such as molecular medicine, genomic medicine or personalized healthcare. The resultsfromdifferentgenomeprojects,the advancesin systemsbiologyand the integrative approaches to physiology would not be possible without new approaches in data and information processing. Within this scenario, novel methodologies and tools will beneededtolinkclinicalandgenomicinformation,forinstance,forgeneticclinical trials, integrated data mining of genetic clinical records and clinical databases, or gene expression studies, among others.Genomic medicine presents a series of challenges that need to be addressed by researchers and practitioners. In this sense, this ISBMDA conference aimed to become a place where researchers involved in biomedical research could meet and discuss. For this conference, the classical contents of former ISMDA conferences were updated to incorporate various issues from the biological ?elds. Similarly to the incorporation of these new topics of the conference, data analysts will face, in this world of genomic medicine and related areas, signi?cant challenges in research, education and practice.

The sequencing of the genomes of humans and other organisms is inspiring the developmentofnew statisticalandbioinformatics tools that we hope canmodify the current understanding of human diseases and therapies. As our knowledge about the human genome increases so does our belief that to fully grasp the mechanisms of diseases we need to understand their genetic basis and the p- teomicsbehind them and to integratethe knowledgegeneratedin thelaboratory in clinical settings. The new genetic and proteomic data has brought forth the possibility of developing new targets and therapies based on these ?ndings, of implementing newly developed preventive measures, and also of discovering new research approaches to old problems. To fully enhance our understanding of disease processes, to develop more and better therapies to combat and cure diseases, and to develop strategies to prevent them, there is a need for synergy of the disciplines involved, medicine, molecular biology, biochemistry and computer science, leading to more recent ?elds such as bioinformatics and biomedical informatics.The 6th International Symposium on Biological and Medical Data Analysis aimed to become a place where researchersinvolved in these diversebut incre- ingly complementary areas could meet to present and discuss their scienti?c results. The papers in this volume discuss issues from statistical models to arc- tectures and applications to bioinformatics and biomedicine. They cover both practical experience and novel research ideas and concepts.

The 2nd International Symposium on Medical Data Analysis (ISMDA 2001) was the continuation of the successful ISMDA 2000, a conference held in Fra- furt, Germany, in September 2000. The ISMDA conferences were conceived to integrate interdisciplinary research from scienti?c ?elds such as statistics, s- nal processing, medical informatics, data mining, and biometrics for biomedical data analysis. A number of academic and professional people from those ?elds, including computer scientists, statisticians, physicians, engineers, and others, - alized that new approaches were needed to apply successfully all the traditional techniques, methods, and tools of data analysis to medicine. ISMDA 2001, as its predecessor, aimed to provide an international forum for sharing and exchanging original research ideas and practical development ex- riences. This year we broadened the scope of the conference, to included methods for image analysis and bioinformatics. Both are exciting scienti?c research ?elds and it was clear to the scienti?c committee that they had to be included in the areas of interest. Medicine has been one of the most di?cult application areas for computing. The number and importance of the di?erent issues involved suggests why many data analysis researchers ?nd the medical domain such a challenging ?eld. New interactive approaches are needed to solve these problems.