The Bio-Informatics Facility (BTIS), established at the Cancer Research Institute in 1989 by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, has the necessary infrastructure to serve scientists, students and clinicians from ACTREC, Tata Memorial Hospital, as well as other hospitals and medical / degree colleges in Mumbai and nearby areas. BTIS provides access to both on-disk and online databases including MEDLINE, Cancerline, as well as databases from NLM (USA) through NCBI. In addition to the e-mail facility through ERNET connectivity (dial-up mode), BTIS since 3 years also has subscribed to dial-up connectivity from VSNL, leading to easy access to different websites on the Internet.

The advanced telecommunications facilities at BTIS include a pre-configured 7-bay CD-Tower and 4 connected terminals capable of providing simultaneous access to different MEDLINE CDs to multiple users. Currently 8 terminals are on LAN for simultaneous access to MEDLINE from the CD-server as well as to the Internet through the Acer Internet / Intranet server. All terminals in the research building are connected through LAN and a VSNL lease line is supposed to be active soon. Recently BTIS has acquired 3 new IBM PIV PCs with CD-RW, and all the older machines have been upgraded to the same configuration (1.8 GHz). The Centre is soon to acquire a Linux Server, and the Xth 5-year plan has made provisions to strengthen BTIS with state-of-the-art instrumentation.

The Bio-Informatics Facility has skilled junior level staff trained in information and library sciences, data communication and transfer, data collection and computer programming, as well as junior scientists with Bio-Informatics and Bio-Statistics background. BTIS staff members routinely download latest relevant shareware from the Internet - such as anti-virus programs, bibliographical information on medical literature and text material from different sites as per user's requests. They have also developed several small software packages and databases for in-house use, including: Ph.D./ M.Sc. theses database, staff publication database (both for the library), staff and students database (for administration), an Institute Conferences database, as well as inventory control software for the Animal House, Photography Section, and Purchase & Stores Department. BTIS has also helped design the ACTREC WebPages hosted at the Tata Memorial Centre website.