Application of IT in Healthcare: A Systematic Review

Rashmeet Toor Inderveer Chana

Thapar University, India Thapar University, India
rashmeett@gmail.com inderveer@thapar.edu

ABSTRACT
The key mission of Healthcare industry is improving lives through
better healthcare solutions. Technical innovations in the last decade
have led to solutions that are safe, cost effective, high-quality and easily
accessible. A wide variety of computational techniques, storage
techniques, softwares and tools are already shaping the future of
healthcare. In this paper we have systematically reviewed the emerging
trends of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare. Further, this paper
elaborates on the impact of healthcare data, technological
transformations and tools which will eventually merge and culminate
into user-centric healthcare in near future. A total of 108 papers were
analyzed, out of which 40 papers were identified to be relevant and
further we classified 19 papers into four broad categories according to
the technologies used. This paper also reveals issues in the current
approaches and suggests possible future outcomes which will help
researchers to gain ideas for further research.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
J.3 [Computer Applications]: Life and Medical Sciences –health,
medical information systems
General Terms
Management, Performance, Human factors, Algorithms
Keywords
Healthcare, Data Mining, Network Analysis, Cloud-based Services,
Text Mining
1. INTRODUCTION
Healthcare is a vast domain and it essentially comprises of hospitals,
clinical trials, telemedicine, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.
The main motive of healthcare industry is to improve the lives of
individuals and make World a healthier place. In 1995,The Institute of
Medicine (IOM) reported that about 98,000 people die in hospitals
every year due to medical errors and about $29 billion is spent every
year in fixing these [36].These errors were attributed to decentralized
and fragmented nature of information related to patients, clinical
pathways, drugs and medical procedures. IOM also reported that about
three out of four errors could have been eliminated if better information
systems would have been used to make required information readily
available. Information technology has been a boon to Healthcare
industry. The advent of Internet and better techniques for storage of data
revolutionized healthcare. Hence, an efficient IT backbone has helped
removing errors in various kinds of applications leading to better
treatments for patients. Accurate, cost effective and timely solutions can
now be provided with the use of technology. These innovations are an
aid not only to the patients, but also to the members of their family,
doctors, pharmacist, hospitals and biological or bioinformatics
researchers.
2. BACKGROUND
In the early 19th century, medical information of patients was limited to
papers and handwritten notes. Due to this, the medical history of a
patient turned out to be fragmented and arduous to access. Since
Information Technology had not intersected the healthcare domain, data
from varied medical tasks required physical storage. The idea of
Electronic Health Records (EHR) developed around 1960s. These
records serve as an electronic repository of valuable data related to
patient’s medical history, drug information, prescription, diagnostic
tests, images, bookings and billing information. This eliminates errors
due to handwriting and promotes data transparency. Data of visits is
centralized at one place and acts as a reference for doctors, pharmacists
and patients. With the technological changes, the EHR also underwent
parallel modifications. EHRs encouraged accurate and efficient
information exchange across geographically dispersed organizations
like laboratories, hospitals, pharmacies and specialists. By 2013, 78.4
percent of physicians in United States had switched to EHR systems
and more than 14 percent intended to switch in future [39]. Microsoft
HealthVault, which is a personal EHR, facilitates people to gather,
store, use and share health information online [36].
The EHRs laid foundation for Clinical Decision Support Systems
(CDSS) and expert systems which act as an aid to decision making for
physicians. The program allows user to enter symptoms and signs in
medical terms and it outputs a list of hypotheses generated using an
extensive knowledge base, along with suggestions for additional
parameters that might improve diagnosis. CDSS improves quality of
decisions and provides reliable and cost efficient consultation [34].
From a generic system, it eventually evolved into the form of an expert
system where machine learning techniques assisted problem solving.
EHRs and CDSS were the initial steps towards an IT-led reform, but
there has been less success in their actual application due to many
factors. First, the doctors found it difficult to learn these computer
systems and they believed it was more time consuming. Second, the
patients demanded privacy and rights to give consent for using their
information in research. Third, the ongoing technological evolution
offered numerous other opportunities like integration and analysis of
data, but these applications were inclined towards management of data.
In CDSS, pre-defined rules were used to extract possible solutions and
there was no scope of analysis of data to discover new rules. But now,
analysis of even genetic data is possible. In the last decade, IT based
healthcare networks have seen tremendous growth. Figure 1 depicts the
upcoming revolution by comparing the current and emerging trends.
Current Trends Future Trends
Patients visit doctor and Information sharing at
share health information home using an app
Clinical data used for
Clinical and genetic data
disease or outcome
based predictions
predictions
No communication
Information exchange
interface between doctors
over the cloud
and pharmacists
Same medicine to every Customized medicine
patient of a particular according to person's
disease genomic profile
Patient monitoring at
No provision of home-
home using sensors and
based patient monitoring
cloud
EHR and Social media
Manual extraction of
mining using tools to
medical knowledge
extract knowledge
Figure 1 Comparison of Current and Future T rends
This paper aims to provide an overview of the state of technologies in Table 2 Search Keywords and Synonyms
IT based healthcare in the last decade with the intention to facilitate
Search keywords Synonyms
researchers with issues and future research directions. The rest of the
paper is organized as follows: Section 3 describes the research Genomics Human Genome Data
technique used for this study. Section 4 elaborates the trends in Cloud Computing for E-health Cloud based Medical Services
healthcare by enlightening on the types of healthcare data, technological
advances, databases and tools emerged since the last decade. Finally, Data Mining in E-health Big Data in Cloud for E-health
Section 5 describes the issues that need attention followed by Section 6 Medical Decision Support Prediction System for Health
which concludes the paper by suggesting some future directions. Systems Services
3. RESEARCH TECHNIQUE Mining genomic data Gene Data Mining
3.1 Research Questions and Motivation
This review aims at summarizing the numerous fields of IT providing 3.4 Study Selection
medical solutions. Various research questions as described in Table 1 The selection procedure followed in this review is described in Figure 2.
were proposed in order to plan the survey. The corresponding Initially, research questions were defined as discussed in section 3.1.
motivation is also discussed. Then, search keywords and synonyms were defined based on the
research questions. Next step was to search the keywords listed in Table
3.2 Sources of Knowledge 2 from relevant sources of knowledge. Since the objective of this paper
Due to an immense medical literature, thousands of options are is to summarize the trends in healthcare, papers from the last decade are
available for search. In this study we have mainly used : incorporated. After extracting the papers, irrelevant papers were purged
by going through their title and abstract. The repetitive papers from
1) NCBI (<www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov>) diverse sources were also removed. Finally, major technologies from
2) Google Scholar (<www.scholar.google.co.in>) the papers were extracted and each paper was categorized according to
3) IEEE Xplore (<www.ieeexplore.ieee.org>) the identified categories.
4) ACM Digital Library (<www.acm.org/dl>)
5) XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students Volume 21 3.5 Results and discussion
Issue 4 (2015) From the survey, 19 papers were discovered to be part of four major
areas which are Data Mining, Network Analysis and Similarity based
3.3 Search Keywords measures, Text Mining and Cloud-based Services. Figure 3 depicts the
Search strings were defined based on the research questions. Keywords percentage of publications in each year. From the figure, majority of
and similar words used in this study are as described in Table 2. publications were done in 2014, followed by 2011 and 2015.

Table 1 Research Questions and Motivation

Review Questions Motivation
a) 1. What kind of data is used for mining in healthcare It aims to identify various types of data used in
research areas and how can such data be extracted? healthcare and possible techniques to extract and use
2. What are the possible sources of extraction of different such data. Healthcare data is an important aspect for
kinds of data? innovations and understanding its types, use and methods
3. How can gene expression data be used in clustering and of extraction is indispensable.
what can we infer from the results?
4. How can the data related to drugs be used for
extracting relations?
b) 1. What are various kinds of prediction or decision The health applications are a blend of different
support systems currently in use and how the data used in technologies used altogether. A vast variety of tools,
it is extracted? databases and techniques are being used. These
2. What are various kinds of technologies in use for cloud questions aid in recognizing the technologies and
important tools utilized in various medical solutions.
based healthcare applications?
3. What are the various biological networks and how they
can be analyzed?
4. How can a biomedical literature be mined and what are
possible tools for it?
5. What are the important databases and tools used in
healthcare domain?

Eliminate Extract major

Define Search
Define Search irrelevant and technologies and
Research Defined
Keywords redundant Categorize each
Questions Sources
papers paper

Figure 2 Study Selection Procedure

 computer based method which predicts patients at risk of septic shocks.
The John Hopkins School of Medicine, along with Microsoft has
3% planned to provide IT solution for Intensive Care Unit where medical
2002
11% 8% devices would interoperate and identify key trends for prev enting
2003
25% 2004 injuries and complications, improving patient’s safety.
5% 2006 In this section, we present the ongoing IT revolution in healthcare in
2007 different dimensions comprising the medical data, intersecting
6% 2008 technologies, diverse databases and tools and focus on the future trends
8% 2010 which might return novel outcomes in coming years.
6% 8% 2011
11%
6% 2012 4.1 Healthcare Data
2013 Due to the data-centric nature of medical applications, it is essential to
3% 2014
2015 understand the varied types of data. From using only the clinical data in
past to mining genetic data in current scenario, data and its
Figure 3 Percentage of Publications in 2002-2015 computations have evolved enormously. A vast variety of data is
accumulated in healthcare applications. This data can be mainly
Figure 4 compares the publications in different technological areas over classified into three types which are Genomics, Proteomics, Drugs
the years. Being a recent research area, Cloud-based services emerged related data and Clinical data. All the data mining tasks, machine
around 2012 and publications in Data Mining accelerated in 2014. learning algorithms, analysis or statistics are applied on these types of
data. Tools and databases are designed according to this data. The
relationship of the technologies with data has been explained in Figure
5.
Data Mining Network Analysis
Text Mining Cloud Based Services Data
Mining

Genomic
Network Proteomic Text
Cloud Based Services Analysis Drugs data Mining
Text Mining
Network Analysis Clinical data
Data Mining

Figure 4 Comparison of papers published in Technological areas
from 2002-2015
4. EMERGING TRENDS
With the accumulation of large volumes of text data, newer techniques
for mining, analyzing and storing the data were devised. Recently, this
data-driven revolution has touched some areas of the medical domain.
In past few years, machine learning techniques are used extensively in
healthcare applications. In an application of heart disease prediction
[27], a new CoActive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (CANFIS)-
Genetic Algorithm Approach was proposed. Similarly, a natural
walking monitor for pulmonary patients was developed using a simple
smart phone with underlying Support Vector Machine algorithm [16].
Artificial intelligence also enhanced decision support systems by
providing various neural network techniques for decision making [22].
Similarly, the EHRs are now used to extract information using text
mining approaches. Further, the convergence of cloud computing with
diverse technologies such as wireless networks, sensors and mobile
computing is leading to creation of newer type of cloud services, which
in turn is proving beneficial for health applications. The data which
earlier required physical or desktop storage can now be easily accessed
from cloud based storage repositories, making it more reliable, available
and cost effective. Innovations and research in IT go hand in hand. John
Hopkins University is one of the several academic initiatives
contributing towards the research work in diverse areas including
healthcare. The Individualized Health Initiative by the university is a
step towards customization of medicine for each patient by analyzing
big databases. The researchers at John Hopkins have devised a
Cloud
based
Services
Figure 5 Relationship between Data and Technologies
4.1.1 Genomic
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a linear series of chemical
components. It stores the genetic information and template for synthesis
of proteins. It basically contains sequences of nucleotides which are one
of G, A, U, C, T. A gene is made up of a sequence of triplets of the
nucleotides (exons). The gene undergoes transcription process, which
forms the ribonucleic acid (RNA) and then the process of translation
takes place where each nucleotide pairs with another, from a
complementary strand (A-T and G-C) forming codons which generate
corresponding amino acids or proteins [26]. These proteins are the basic
building blocks for the development and function of a human being.
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was the international research
program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of
all the genes of humans. It was named Genome, as all the genes
together are known as "genome". The HGP has revealed that there are
probably about 20,500 human genes. It gave complete sequence of
human genes in 2003 which is a resource of detailed information about
the structure and function of genes
(http://www.genome.gov/12011238). Due to provision of such
resources and continuous improvements in technology, biologists and
researchers can now analyze the genomic data to provide customized
healthcare solutions. The explosion of enormous genetic data led
researchers to not just only accurately analyzing such data but also there
was a need to find out optimal performance solutions [20].
4.1.2 Proteomic
Protein-protein interaction networks (PPIs) are network models which
represent the pair wise protein interactions of an organism. Proteins that
interact with another can be clustered according to their biological
function or as they participate in same biological process [4]. Unknown
functions and properties of proteins can be recognized this way. A set of
proteins produced in an organism is known as proteome.
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteomes. It differs from cell to
cell and changes over time. Proteomics can help finding new drug
targets and hence alternate therapies for patients can be suggested.
4.1.3 Drugs related data
There is a term P4 medicine which will be the ultimate goal of
researchers in coming years. P4 refers to a medicine which is not only
personalized, but also predictive, preventive and participatory [14]. To
fulfill this goal, underlying data used will be the drugs related data in
conjunction with proteomic or genomic data to infer unknown
observations. The tasks of finding differentially expressed genes
actually help in drug target identification. Once this is done, drugs can
be produced accordingly. This way, side effects of drugs can be reduced
as now the drug becomes more specific. The comparison of drug gene
expression and disease gene expression can also be used to infer
possible drugs for a disease [32]. It is possible to predict drug response
of cancer patients according to their genomic profile [31]. If the drug
response is known, better selection of drugs is possible for individual
patients leading to the notion of personalized medicine.
4.1.4 Clinical data
Clinical data mainly comprises of health parameters observed by
physician or sensor technologies. An extensive research has been
carried out in mining such data. In [], parameters related to diabetes like
BP and Cholesterol have been monitored and analyzed to predict
diabetic patients.
Clinical records are generic in nature as they help in predicting the
outcomes according to rules generated by observing patterns in data. On
the other hand, genomic, proteomic and drugs related data are generic
as well as specific. Every living being will possess these data which
makes it generic and each individual will have unique set of genes,
protein interactions and drug responses which makes it specific. Due to
specificity of data, these can be used for the concept of personalized
medicine.
4.2 Technologies used
From this survey, major technologies for healthcare have been realized
where IT has progressed in past few years. The technologies include:
 Data Mining
 Network Analysis
 Text Mining
 Cloud Based Services
Table 3 Findings, Tools and Techniques used in Data Mining
Technology Author Year
LM. Fu and ES.Youn [11] 2003 Reliable Gene Selection
SC. Shah and A.Kusiak 2004
[29]
K. Jung et al. [17] 2010
Data
Mining K. Ahmed et al. [2] 2013
Y. C. Chen, W. C.Ke and 2014
H. W.Chiu [7]
J. Ma, C. Peng and Q. Chen 2014
[27]
In this section, we discuss some major tools and techniques used in
respective technologies.
4.2.2 Data Mining
Data mining refers to extracting new relationships or patterns from large
amount of data. In bioinformatics, data mining has been used
extensively for gene finding, disease diagnosis and treatment
optimization, identifying similar genes, protein and gene interaction
network reconstruction and many more. Clustering techniques for gene
expression data has helped in recognizing unknown gene function or
discovering unknown subtypes of a disease. Similar expression profile
genes are placed in the same cluster and changing levels of gene
expression are observed, so that unknown genes with similar profile can
be identified [8]. Comparing differentially expressed genes in normal
and diseased state leads to a gene expression profile or signature for that
disease.
According to the papers analysed, the progress has been done mainly in
two areas (I) Disease related predictions (II) Gene Selection methods.
One of the recent works done in Disease related predictions is [7] where
high-throughput gene expression data and clinical data was analysed to
create a prediction model for prognosis of lung cancer patients. The
correlation between gene signatures and patient survival time was
examined. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) architecture was used with
training data to build the model and five correlated genes were
identified. Other techniques like hierarchical clustering, decision trees
and risk scores for analysis of data were also compared. In [17],
response of cancer patients is predicted using Linear Discriminant
Analysis (LDA) classification. Early detection of lung cancer is also
possible as proposed in [2], in which K- means clustering is first used
and then AprioriTiD algorithm and decision trees are generated to
discover frequent patterns.
The other area entailed the notion of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism
(SNP). SNPs are the variations of a single nucleotide (organic
molecule) at same locus of two individuals of same species. The
analysis of SNPs determines SNP/gene patterns for a particular disease
or relationships between genotype and phenotype information. Such
knowledge can help in better drugs development or in personalized
medicine. Due to high cost, such data should first be analysed to select
most informative genes/SNPs. For this, four main approaches are
proposed [29] [11], namely the Weighted Decision tree based gene
selection (WDTGS) , Genetic Algorithm based gene selection (GAGS),
feature set intersection and Support Vector Machine (SVM) approach.
In Weighted Decision tree, decision rules are formed while in GAGS,
genetic algorithm is used to retrieve significant genes. Similarly, one
approach uses SVM algorithm while in feature set intersection, any two
datasets from first two approaches are merged and important features
are selected. Table 3 summarizes the findings in this domain in past few
years.
Findings Techniques/Tools
used
SVM algorithm
Gene Selection Methods WDTGS-GAGS,
feature set intersection
Predict therapy response of LDA classification
cancer patients
Early detection of lung K-means, AprioriTid,
cancer Decision tree
Risk classification of ANN algorithm
cancer
Heart disease prediction CANFIS-Genetic
system Algorithm

4.2.3 Network Analysis and Similarity based measures
In searching for candidate genes related to a disease, another popular
methodology which researchers opted was analyzing the various
networks like gene-gene, gene-disease interaction networks. In [10],
clustering of diseases is done based on similarity measures calculated
using phenotypic attributes. Hence potential disease genes not known
yet are identified. The difference in [12] lies in that it believes that a
gene will be related to a disease if its neighbours are associated with
similar diseases. M.B. Carson, and H. Lu[5] extracted proteins
associated with disease using network analysis along with data mining.
So interactions with other proteins and the disease relationships of
neighbouring proteins determined if a protein had a relationship to
disease. Further, a machine learning algorithm-ADTree algorithm was
proposed which provided the order of most important characteristics for
classification of proteins. Table 4 summarizes the findings.
4.2.4 Text Mining
Most of the biological literature is in an unstructured form. Even if we
want to search a particular entity like a gene, it leads us to discovering
thousands of articles which are difficult to read as such. One solution is
manual curation of articles but again with such data, it is not a feasible
approach. Another solution is automatic extraction using computers.
This poses problems of accuracy. So, CBioC was introduced [3] which
Table 4 Findings, Tools and Techniques used in Network Analysis and Similarity based measures
Technology Author Year
J. Freudenberg and P. 2002
Propping [10]
Network P. Shannon et al [30] 2003
Analysis
X. Guo, et al [12] 2011
MB. Carson and H. Lu [5] 2015
is a prototype for collaboration of interactions from biological literature.
Protein-protein interactions or gene-disease relationships are extracted
using natural language processing methods. The researchers can use the
server for searching the database and annotate relevant facts. Similarly,
literature mined gene interaction network is used to identify gene-
disease associations [25].M. Huang et al. [15] devised an algorithm to
extract PPIs from patterns. Knowledge can be extracted from raw
medical records, social media or search engine logs using text mining
and machine learning [37] which can help in identifying signals of
adverse drug reactions [18]. J. Mork et al. [23] explained MetaMap tool
which maps biomedical text to the Unified Medical Language System
(UMLS). Table 5 summarizes the techniques and tools of text mining.
4.2.5 Cloud-based Services
Cloud Computing is a fast growing trend that includes several services
like designing computing systems, developing applications and
leveraging existing services for building software, all offered on
demand over the internet in a pay-as-you-go model. It lowers the costs
and increases the speed of deployment of applications. Due to
technology advances like use of Body Area Networks, Wireless
Networks, Bluetooth connections, now healthcare data can be easily
communicated across remote areas. So many applications have used the
same concept along with cloud to provide efficient storage, better
availability and analysis of medical data over remote areas.
Findings Techniques/Tools
used
Predict disease relevant Similarity based
genes measures
New tool for network Cytoscape
analysis
Predict disease relevant Iterative algorithm
genes
Predict protein-disease ADTree algorithm
relation

Table 5 Findings, Tools and Techniques used in Text Mining

Technology Author Year Findings Techniques/Tools
used
M. Huang, et al [15] 2004 Discover patterns to extract Pattern matching
PPIs from text algorithm

Text C. Baral et al [3] 2007 Extract biomedical CBioC prototype

Mining
A. Özgüret al [25]
S. Karimi et al [18]
relations
2008 Using literature mined gene Dependency parsing
interaction network
2015 Adverse drug reaction Different techniques
detection

Table 6 Findings, Tools and Techniques used in Cloud-based Services

Technology Author Year Findings Techniques/Tools
used
M. Fahim et al [9] 2012 Elderly person reminder & Cloud, Android
care giver assistant app platform

Cloud- V. Koufiet al [19] 2012 Cloud based Emergency NefaliEMS

based Medical Service (EMS)
Services B.E. Reddy, TVS. Kumar 2012 Cloud based Healthcare CHMS using Aneka,
and G.Ramu [28] Monitoring System(CHMS) Xen Server
J. Ma, C. Peng and Q. Chen 2014 Digital home based self- OpenStack, Amazon
[21] care Web Services
S. Mukherjee, K. Dolui and 2014 Patient health management Cloud storage,ReTiHA
SK. Datta [24] system for emergency cases
Some major applications or frameworks studied in this review are
tabulated in Table 6. B.E Reddy et. al. [28] discussed a better healthcare
monitoring system as it utilizes the cloud capabilities. In this, the data
from various remote patients is stored on a cloud based medical
repository using Aneka. The remote patients as well as concerned
doctors can communicate among themselves on this platform. In
another study of monitoring system [24], there is provision of Real
Time Health Advice and Action (ReTiHA) service, which is invoked
when the Emergency medical response system fails.Cloud provides an
efficient, fast and secure platform for Emergency cases as well, using
the Electronic Medical Records in cloud environment[19]. Another
application was developed for smart homes on android platform for
tracking of daily life activities of users (mainly elderly people) [9].
Applications have been made where the patients can manage their own
medical data at home. J. Maet. al. [21] proposed a cloud based solution
which enables patients of chronic diseases to share the health
information for different purposes. A. Hans and S. Kalra performed a
detailed comparative analysis of cloud-based medical services [13].
4.3 Databases and Tools
In this section, we give an overview of some important tools and
databases which are an aid to healthcare professionals and researchers
so that they can perform various computational as well as medical tasks.
The medical literature is interrelated and complex so the database can
also be observed in various forms. In Table 7, some of the common
publicly available databases and the kind of data provided by them are
tabulated. Table 8 illustrates type, purpose and special features of some
popular tools.
5. ISSUES NEED TO BE CONSIDERED
Although the healthcare industry is progressing at a fast pace, still there
are issues in certain areas that need to be addressed. Due to privacy and
confidentiality concerns, public cloud technologies are not motivated
much. One of the reasons behind the failure of Google Health and
popularity of Microsoft Health Vault is privacy concern. Due to the
same reason, gathering genomic data is also not very easy.
Using data mining or machine learning techniques for providing
healthcare solutions require a great deal of understanding of both the
domains as it is an interdisciplinary subject. Moreover, biological
literature is vast and integrating such data is complicated. Although
hundreds of tools are present but in order to innovate new solutions, one
should be well verse with relevant tools and techniques.
Further, healthcare data needs to be updated from time to time. In
therapeutic study, the data still needs to be gathered for various new
drugs and diseases. Table 9 describes some common issues and future
outcomes expected in respective technologies.
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This review paper describes the major technologies in healthcare
domain along with discussion about popular techniques, tools and
databases, so that interested researchers can comprehend the state of the
work done in different technologies. Due to issues in these technologies,
new ideas will be needed to overcome the reluctance to accept cloud
and other technologies.
Two very new domains in this field are pharmaceutical and disease
dietomics. For the former, work is in progress which is evident from the
research work done using drugs data as we have discussed earlier in
section 4.1.3. For the latter, diet related data can be used to infer
relations between our diet and diseases. Blood sugar response to
changes in daily diet, exercise and other activities can be used to predict
personalized nutrition. So in coming years, we can expect outcomes in
these areas. We hope that this study will be beneficial for those who
want to pursue work in any of the technologies discussed.

Table 8 Purpose and Features of tools

Tools Type Purpose Special Features

GeneMerge[6] Web-based standalone program -Returns descriptive -Takes gene association

info(functional and
genomic data) for each
study gene
-Returns rank scores for
over-representation of
descriptors in genes
Cytoscape[30][33] Open-source software project -Integration of molecular
interaction network data at
large scale
-analysis and visualization
of networks
Arraytrack[35] Bioinformatics review tool -manage, analyse and
interpret genomic,
proteomic and
metabolomic data
Galaxy[1] Open, web-based platform -users can interact with
various bioinformatics
tools and share data
- perform analysis without
worrying about resources
files, description file,
study set and population
set gene file as input
-Outputs tab delimited txt
file
-core extensible through
plug-in architecture
- mapping of data
attributes to visual
display and n/w layout
-development done with
Voluntary eXploratory
Data Submission (VXDS)
and MicroArray Quality
Control (MAQC) projects
-particularly used in Food
and Drug Administration
-can install different
bioinformatics tools
-Galaxy Main free and
publicly available, plug-
ins also available
-available on various
cloud computing
resources
 Table 9 Common issues and future outcomes for various technologies
Technologies Issues in current state
Data Mining Numerous studies for only cancer related
predictions
A single data mining technique used in every
study
Network Reliable PPIs and disease description not
Analysis known
Analysis done only for a particular disease
Cloud-based Privacy and security issues
Services
Emergency medical service not considered in
some applications
High cost of using cloud resources
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