Hundreds of methods and software have been developed to facilitate genetic research, as shown on an excellent web resource. Most of those tools were developed by academic researchers, with their own web sites for detailed information. Those tools may be state-of-the-art, but they are often difficult to understand and use, especially to researchers without much informatics or programming expertise. Usually users will need to contact the authors for help. Even though many authors are very accommodating, they often have other obligations. In the end, a researcher might likely have to spend hours after hours hoping to find solutions on his/her problem.

It is our belief that a centralized community that contains forums for all biomedical data analysis software can serve researchers better as many questions and solutions can be organized in the forums. Instead of scouting the web, a user can settle in one portal and find all s/he needs.

The same approach can be taken for various data formats used in biomedical data analysis. To start it off, we have provided some detailed description on data formats currently supported in BioIDE. More data formats will be listed as we finish analyzing them.

As you can see, this effort will not be possible with the involvement of a few people or a few organizations. If you like the idea, we would appreciate your participation.