Trends Innovations Challenges in Employing Interdisciplinary Approaches to Biomedical Sciences

The last few decades have seen the stepwise incorporation of multitude of disciplines of computer sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, and information technology in the field of biomedical sciences slowly and systematically. Influx and integration of the other disciplines were not accepted readily by the biomedical researcher community and face significant hesitation and resistance. However, with the increase in the complexity of the problems faced by biomedical sciences, the field became more pervious to the allow the multidisciplinary thought process. The idea of multidisciplinary, cross disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches to solve a problem is not a recent facet. In 1963, almost 60 years ago, Karl Popper made the claim that “We are not students of some subject matter, but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the boundaries of any subject matter or discipline” (Karl Popper 1963). Popper’s statement keeps finding new-found relevance with the advent of new challenges faced by the mankind, COVID-19 being the latest example. Real-life biomedical problems are not linear or associated with a single discipline. They are multifaceted and are determined by differing causes which require an integrated approach of multiple disciplines.