We are competing this week with the announcement of Windows 2000 and the excitement engendered by the Internet. But the topics discussed in our meeting will be of lasting value, and not be made obsolete by a new release next year. Data, Knowledge and Information Bioinformatics has become the accepted term for a new field in science, covering research, development and applications of information science and technology to biology and medicine.
Information is created at the confluence of knowledge and data.
Data is obtained from observations, and its values should be objectively verifiable. Knowledge is gained through processing of observations, gained by experience, teaching, and the more formal processes we will focus on. Knowledge is compact, it applies to many data instances. We need knowledge to select and filter appropriate data from an ever-increasing flow of observations, and assess their correctness. We need knowledge to classify instances and aggregate their parameters.