Guest editorial: Special section on biological data mining and its applications in healthcare

Biologists are stepping up their efforts in understanding the biological processes that underlie disease pathways in the clinical contexts. This has resulted in a flood of biological and clinical data - genomic sequences, DNA microarrays, protein interactions, biomedical images, disease pathways, etc. The rapid adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) across healthcare systems, coupled with the capability of linking EHRs to research biorepositories, provides a unique opportunity for conducting large-scale Precision Medicine research. As a result, data mining techniques, for knowledge discovery and deriving data driven insights from various data sources, are increasingly important in modern biology and healthcare. The purpose of this special section is to bring together the researchers in bioinformatics, healthcare informatics, and data mining to share about their current research, and their visions on future directions.