Informatics

The term informatics has been used in a number of ways since the 1960s. In Northern Europe, academic departments of informatics cover a range of topics that are similar to those covered in the academic departments of computer science and information systems in the United States. In the United States, informatics has come to include a wider array of connotations because it is usually coupled with some adjective, such as medical informatics, bio-informatics, chemical informatics, or educational informatics. These ‘X-informatics fields’ are often defined as the application of information and communication technologies (IT) and information management (IM) techniques to ‘topic X.’ These applications-focused definitions are much too narrow. Although Xinformatics often include these IT and IM applications, it is also important to include 1) the ...