The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Info-based medicine need of the hour, says Allam Appa Rao

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Saturday, Sep 13, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Info-based medicine need of the hour, says Allam Appa Rao

Staff Reporter

Continuing Medical Education programme held at RMC

Pathologists and microbiologists conduct the programme
It’s a prelude to their 26th State conference

Kakinada: Traditional medicine was based on personal experience, anecdotal evidence, patient testimony, expert opinion and journals. Today, the convergence of life sciences, health care and information technology has revolutionised the discovery of new treatments and the way medicine is practiced. This pattern, which is known as Information Based Medicine (IBM), is the need of the hour, says Vice-Chancellor of JNTU (Kakinada) Allam Appa Rao.

Speaking at a Continuing Medical Education programme organised at Rangaraya Medical College (RMC) by the Indian Association of Pathologists and Microbiologists as a prelude to its 26th State conference, Prof. Appa Rao said IBM had been made easier by Bio-informatics which applies algorithms to medical data sets that typically consist of a large number of DNA, RNA or protein sequences.

Valuable contribution

IBM improves the existing pharmaceutical and medical practices with the help of knowledge generated by the integration of diverse clinical and biomedical data. It also accelerates the new research discoveries into clinical practices. For instance, one of the most valuable contributions to classification of diabetes came from the world famous statistician C.R. Rao. This gives a broad idea of the increasing interplay of medicine and IT.

Prof. Rao said a human body processes a huge amount of information and, bio-informatics, which involves the use of applied mathematics, statistics, computer science and biochemistry, helps in exploring means to improve the functioning of cells and molecules.

Therefore, a new breed of professionals specialising in these emerging areas of science has to be nurtured so that the fruits of global research in IT plus medicine benefit the masses. Later, doctors -- Mano Goyal, Paresh Jain and S. Sudha Murthy -- gave a presentation on Flow Cytometry and Hematological Malignancies.

Government General Hospital superintendent M.B.R. Sarma and others were present.

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