Pursuing B.Tech in Bioinformatics: Is it worth it?

What and why of bioinformatics?

Confused because you’re proficient in both biology and computer science? Bioinformatics comes to your rescue! Bioinformatics is a highly specialized field and is an amalgamation of biology, data science and statistics. Dwelling on a notion that studying bioinformatics means studying a lot of biology can be misleading. Around 70% of the course involves studying computer science and statistics related concepts and the remainder is biology. There’s a plethora of biological data being generated by scientists in wet-labs and its meaningful interpretation is need of the hour.

The bioinformatics is a multi-disciplinary field to solve the biological problems through Computer science, Mathematics and other information sciences. Without the help of bioinformatics it was not possible to decode the mystery of complex biological data. Bioinformatics play a significant role in basic and translational research which includes Genomics, Transcriptomics and Proteomics, design new diagnostic tools, drug discovery process, pharmacogenomics and in the development of personalized medicine. Nowadays, big data is being generated in healthcare sector, hence for managing that data there is a need of Bioinformaticians to develop robust computing method, data bases, and data analysis tools. In the era of digitization bioinformatics has its own footprint in medical and healthcare industry. The Bioinformatics is a hot topic in upcoming era due to revolution of artificial intelligent (AI) in healthcare sector. Pharmaceutical companies are also using AI-based bioinformatics tools to identify potential drug targets and respective inhibitors. The AI-based methods can play major role in the identification of drug resistance in virus and bacteria with the support of bioinformatics.   

Carrier and job prospect:

The Bioinformaticians are multi-skills professionals having expertise in one domain as well as they can perform task form various other domains too. Bioinformatics graduates have more practical experience and their multidisciplinary expertise helps to perform variety of task. Bioinformatics graduates can pursue higher education such as M. Tech, M.S and Ph.D. program in India or abroad. After getting Ph.D., the students can pursue for the postdoctoral study in world-class global reputed institutions. They can also get the job as a research associate, assistant professor, data steward as well as scientist. They can get job in academic, research, public sector and in industries. They can work as computational chemist, data scientist, database designer, web designer, informatics developer, medical coder, and other biomedical professionals. Furthermore, Bioinformatics graduates can find job in several biotech companies. Various IT and pharmaceutical companies offer jobs for b tech Bioinformatics graduates in India and abroad with good packages as system analyst, application analyst, database designer, system engineers and hard core programmers.
 
The growing use of bioinformatics tools in healthcare promotes the growth of bioinformatics market and is clearly evident from the following statistics. The global bioinformatics market generated $6,389 million in 2017, and is projected to reach $18,233 million by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 13.8% from 2018 to 2025.

 “If you have a keen interest in computer science and biology then Bioinformatics is a great carrier opportunity with high demand and outstanding growth.”