The Hindu Business Line : Centre initiates study on bio-informatics potential

THE Government has initiated a feasibility study to look at growth potential in the bio-informatics sector. The work is being carried out by Ernst and Young and would be concluded within six months,

Mr Kamalkant Jaiswal, IT Secretary, said.

He said there is a wide gap in demand-supply for professionals in the bio-informatics area and pegged the requirement at 77,000 over a period of three years. "The number of professionals churned out by the educational institutes in the country is so small and plans have been drawn for capacity building of professionals,'' he said.

He said the Government is focusing on a few centres such as the Pune University, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Technology for the professionals.

Addressing a gathering at the Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies on the theme `Pune's potential to be the knowledge capital of India', organised by TiE (The IndUS Entrepreneurs), he said a DNA/bio-informatics park project has been initiated by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and Government of India to facilitate export of bio-IT solutions and attract foreign direct investment in the field of information technology and health sciences.

The project includes development of one or more parks under the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme to cater to IT related needs of health sciences industry. Further, he noted that it would also endeavour to promote India as a global hub for IT solutions (products and services) in the health sciences sector by enabling companies to move up the value chain by accessing world-class bio-computational infrastructure and services.

Mr Jaiswal noted that the three fundamental resources required for bio-informatics research efforts included data storage, computational resources and communication bandwidth.

Keeping these requirements, the proposed park would provide facilities to high-end computing, software development, wet lab studies, education and training facility, national resources centres and service apartments and recreational facility.

He said the DNA park would also address requirements that were critical to laboratory productivity and time to market in an research and development (R&D) environment. These would include sharing and pooling information across global resources while maintaining security, adding new data sources without new software development or complete redeployment of the solution etc.

He said the partners in this project would be DIT, State Governments private companies and anchor tenants.

Mr Jaiswal noted that the total global market size for bio-IT solutions is pegged at $25 billion and is growing at 20 per cent annually.

In India, the market is pegged at $15 million and is poised to grow to $120 million by 2006. He added that globally IT companies are focusing on the expanding opportunity and competing to deliver unique solutions for the bio-IT market.

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