Materia Medica Malaysiana

Use of biomedical informatics technology hailed

KUALA LUMPUR: The Government welcomes the use of biomedical informatics technology – which employs supercomputers to process huge amounts of medical data – as it can help save lives.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said researchers using biomedical informatics were now able to map and pinpoint abnormalities in genes.
“Through genetic identification, we can recognise a disease even before a child is born
“The ultimate goal is to use such information to develop new ways to treat, cure or prevent thousands of diseases that afflict humankind,” he said before opening the First National Biomedical Informatics Conference and Exhibition at Universiti Malaya yesterday.
While acknowledging that Malaysia currently did not have enough expertise and skills in this comparatively new field, he challenged the participants to “prove to the world that Malaysia can be a formidable force in this field”.
The minister later witnessed the signing of a memorandum between the university and Virescent Sdn Bhd to undertake research, development and training programmes in areas of bio-informatics and bio-computing.