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EW YORK--The market for bioinformatics tools, services, and databases could exceed $2 billion within five years, according to a report written by Jason Reed, an equity research analyst at Oscar Gruss. The report, "Trends in Commercial Bioinformatics," predicted that bioinformatics will become an increasingly important competitive differentiator for public and private life science companies. Market expansion will be driven by explosive growth in genomic research as well as by the weaknesses of available analysis tools and databases, Reed said.
Reed estimated that more than 50 companies make up the bioinformatics industry. He reported that most sales in the area today come from database providers and software/tools suppliers, but added that enterprise IT providers should "garner a larger portion of the industry’s total sales, driven by a great need for integration of the various databases/tools with R&D efforts."