NEW YORK, NY -- Bioinformatics, the combination of information technology (IT) and biological sciences, is being recognized as a critical component of drug discovery by both pharmaceutical and pure IT companies. "With the massive quantities of data now available to researchers, computers have become essential," says Technical Insights Analyst Katherine Austin. "However, having the data in the computer does not mean that it can be used in any meaningful way. The challenge for bioinformatics developers is to design platforms that can manage, retrieve, organize, compare, manipulate, and integrate data in a way that accelerates research, rather than acting as a bottleneck."