The institute was originally created to provide a framework for stable long-term funding for both the Swiss-Prot database and the Swiss EMBnet node.

Swiss-Prot in particular went through a major funding crisis in 1996,[1] which led the leaders of the five research groups active in bioinformatics in Geneva and Lausanne, Ron Appel, Amos Bairoch, Philipp Bucher, Victor Jongeneel and Manuel Peitsch to create SIB.

Current research groups in SIB are located in Basel, Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano, Zurich, Yverdon, Wädenswil, Bellinzona and Davos.

SIB manages several bioinformatics core facilities that provide informatics and statistical support, as well as services and advice to life scientists, thus enabling them to conduct their research projects and analyse the resulting data.

SIB members are directly, or indirectly, involved in a number of bioinformatics courses at all educational levels – from high school to undergraduate and graduate degrees – as well as in specialized training for life scientists.

SIB also promotes a PhD Training Network in bioinformatics, which is open to graduate students at Swiss schools of higher education.