Some of The Most Needed Computational Applications in Biomedical Research

Question

[BioICoder]

Greetings all,

I would like to develop a computational tool that can be very helpful for the bio-medical research; however, my only problem is that every time I think of an idea I see it already being developed which is very understandable. Can you provide me with a better way of finding out what are some of the most computational needed applications in the bio-medical research in which I can work on (some of the most hotspots unsolved problems in biomedical research in which computation can play a major role in?

Thanks a lot in advance and truly appreciate your inputs.

Best

[ivivek_ngs]

It is nice to what you intend to do however as of now I will suggest not to re-invent the wheel rather use the tools that are already there, and exploit their utility to your interest. One can always build up automated workflows and pipelines with enriched graphical images that can be beneficial for research reports. The novelty of your work will lie on the kind of algorithms and methods you are selecting to analyze the data and the innovative images that you generate thus simplifying the work to easier understanding. This does not mean that it will be not of great scientific intellect. This means you have a great knowledge of the methods and tools and post benchmark you have created a workflow that serves the best fit to generate a scientific flow for better understanding for researchers. Every field in research seems to be unsolved. Data complexity is never ending so your data-driven approaches with evolving over time. The more you learn methods and tools and exploit them to understand the power and which tool best fits your hypothesis and data, the better you learn the tricks of the field. So ideally you can always come up with a new method. But at the moment you can try to learn more and create workflow with proper visualizations that can really help fellow researchers with clear intent of the work. Keep in mind such automated workflows are really time taking and not easy to design so there is always innovativeness in the design and the dissemination of the knowledge that you are trying to convey.

[Jean-Karim Heriche]

Tools are developed to solve a problem or make things more efficient or easier to use. If the issue is "hot" enough then people are most likely already on it so the best way to contribute would be to join an already existing effort. Alternatively, you could identify a niche like an issue that's important but to a small community that doesn't have the resources to tackle it. Also a lot of tools are developed along the way of answering a research question but are not necessarily turned into something usable by the community so one contribution could be to make useful tools more accessible.