Summary
Objectives:
To contribute a new perspective on recent investigations into the scientific foundations
of medical informatics (MI) and bioinformatics (BI). To support efforts that could
generate synergies and new research directions.
Methods:
MI and BI are compared and contrasted from a philosophy of science perspective. Historical
examples from MI and BI are analyzed based on contrasting viewpoints about the evolution
of scientific disciplines.
Results:
Our analysis suggests that the scientific approaches of MI and BI involve different
assumptions and foundations, which, together with largely non-overlapping communities
of researchers for the two disciplines, have led to different courses of development.
We indicate how their respective application domains, medicine, and biology may have
contributed to these differences in development.
Conclusions:
An analysis from the point of view of the philosophy of science is characteristic
of established scientific disciplines. From a Kuhnian perspective, both disciplines
may be entering a period of scientific crisis, where their foundations are questioned
and where new ideas (or paradigm shifts) and a progressive research programme are
needed to advance them scientifically. We discuss research directions and trends both
supporting and challenging integration of the subdisciplines of MI and BI into a unified
field of biomedical informatics (BMI), centered around the evolution of information
cybernetics.
Keywords
Medical informatics - bioinformatics - philosophy of science - paradigm shift - scientific
crisis - evolution
