Advancing India’s bioinformatics education and research: an assessment and outlook

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field of study that uses computation to extract knowledge from biological data. It has become an integral component of today’s biological and biomedical sciences. Thus, considering its necessity, the Government of India through the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) laid the framework for developing bioinformatics infrastructure and human resource in 1986–1987. Over three decades, bioinformatics education and research in India has made consistent progress; created large number of bioinformatics centres across the country, trained human resources, started consortium project, participated in international sequencing projects, and contributed substantially in knowledge discovery in the form of scientific publications and creation of tools/databases/software. An analysis of publications data reveal that India’s bioinformatics research is continuously increasing and India is among the top contributors to the field sharing 7% of the total publications. Overall, this article aims to provide a concise overview of the inception, development and current situation of bioinformatics activities in India. This article also analyses the key challenges of current bioinformatics programs and provides viewpoints to overcome those challenges.