Centre of Biomedical Informatics (CBI)

The Centre of Biomedical Informatics (CBI) was established on March 1^st, 2006 by the Ministry of Education CR under the registration number 1M06014 with the duration to December 31^st, 2011.

The aim of the project is to develop a protocol for the preparation of an oligonucleolytic chip with the optimal set of genes for diagnostics and prognosis of cardiovascular diseases; design of a system for decision support, computer-assisted diagnostics and individualization of health care in cardiology; design of a system for decision support in dental medicine and enhancement of quality in postgraduate PhD. studies in the field of biomedical informatics. The results of the project will be accessible in the form of papers in reviewed journals, presentations during prestigious international conferences and in the form of prototypes of decision support systems for cardiology and dentistry.

There are five institutions participating in the project:

Institute of Computer Science AS CR, Department of Medical Informatics
Charles University in Prague, First Faculty of Medicine
Municipal Hospital in Čáslav, Outpatients Department of Cardiology
EuroMISE s.r.o.
Bio-Consult Laboratories, spol. s r. o.

The main contribution of this project will be a considerable improvement in individualization of a patient care. This will be reached by designing of new methods for decision support and specification of relevant features for diagnostics, determination of prognoses and therapies, which will be based on genetic data. A complete oligonucleolytic chip will be designed and validated. This chip will be designated for routine diagnostics.

Designed methods will help with identification of genes, which are set for diagnostics and prognosis determination in specified cardiovascular diseases, such as angina pectoris, acute myocardial infarction, coronary failure, and cerebrovascular incidence in comparison with a control group of people without any manifest cardiovascular diseases. The contribution of the project will be an analysis of gained information and its utilization in combination with available clinical patient's characteristics in determination of preventive precautions and design of individualized patient care. Profiling of gene expressions types of almost one thousand genes within one experiment by means of statistical methods applications designed for the data analysis acquired by the microarrays method on the level of DNA and RNA will contribute to better diagnostics and a prognosis determination in cardiovascular diseases.

Systems for decision support will contribute also to efficiency enhancement of decision making of dentists on the bases of data about patients stored in a form of electronic health record, developed earlier in the framework of the EuroMISE Centre. Technologies based on information in an electronic health record enable to record information in more details and to use this information in, e.g. diagnostics and therapy and for forensic purposes.

Structuralization of dental information in a dental cross will contribute to an easier control and also to easier feeding of data not only in a form of a formalized record but also in a graphic way enabling to connect graphic, numeric and written forms of data collecting.

Designed technologies of medical guidelines formalization in a structured electronic way will help to increase efficiency of the work of general practitioners. Formalized medical guidelines for the field of cardiology will be accessible by means of Internet and other information technologies.

A better control of interactions and contraindications of administered drugs based on the information about drugs gained by means of extraction and by formalization of a free text will help to increase patients' safety. A better efficiency of present tools for a free text processing will be reached by their adaptation to usage in healthcare environment.

Newly designed methodologies of biomedical informatics teaching in relation to current genetic knowledge and using new information technologies and preparation of teaching materials and textbooks will be another contribution of the project. In the framework of the project a knowledge database for evaluation of students' knowledge by means of Internet will be prepared. We presume that an electronic monograph will be prepared. It will serve as a main information source for a doctoral course with the interdisciplinary theme of biomedical informatics, statistics and genetics.

The contribution of the project will be also results of a basic research, which are related to the information-theoretic approach to measuring of information, diversity and interval and their application in a genetic research. Within the project the open-source statistical system R and applications of advanced statistical methodologies in an analysis of biomedical data will be used. The contribution will be the already mentioned analysis and also the possibility to adapt existing methodologies and a design of new methodological approaches in solving specific problems connected with an analysis of biomedical data.