Drug discovery and development requires the integration of multiple scientific and technological disciplines. These include chemistry, biology, pharmacology, pharmaceutical technology and extensive use of information technology. The latter is increasingly recognised as Pharmacoinformatics.
Pharmacoinformatics may be defined as: Implementation and use of information technologies for the discovery and development of drugs as well as in pharmacy education. It sometimes is also referred as chembioinformatics.
Main idea behind the field is to integrate plethora informatics branches viz chemoinformatics, bioinformatics, inmmunoinformatics etc to single platform, resulting in seamless process of drug discovery. First dedicated department for Pharmacoinformatics was established at National Institute Of Pharmaceutical Education And Research, S.A.S. Nagar, India in 2003. Which is followed by different universities worldwide including a programme by European universities named European Pharmacoinformatics Initiative (EuroPIN). Recently the University of Vienna established a Full Professorship for Pharmacoinformatics with Gerhard F. Ecker as chair.