informatics

IPA/ˌɪnfəˈmætɪks/
KK[ˌɪnfɚmˈætɪks]IPA/ˌɪnfərˈmætɪks/

informatics — noun

1. the academic field that studies how information is collected, organized, stored,

1.nounB2
Definition

the academic field that studies how information is collected, organized, stored, and accessed — especially with the help of computer systems and digital tools.

Example

Dahlia enrolled in an informatics program at National Taiwan University last fall.

informatics program — academic course of study

The hospital hired Walid to lead its new health informatics department.

health informatics — subfield in medicine

Common collocations
  • informatics research
  • informatics program
  • informatics degree
  • informatics specialist
  • health informatics
  • medical informatics
  • nursing informatics
  • biomedical informatics
  • study informatics
  • specialize in informatics
Synonyms
  • information science

    older, library-focused term; informatics is broader and more technology-oriented

  • data science

    focuses on analyzing and modelling data rather than on storage and retrieval systems

  • computer science

    wider field that includes hardware, programming theory, and algorithms

Grammar Patterns

informatics + noun

field of + informatics

Usage Note

Informatics is an uncountable noun and takes a singular verb. It often appears in compound terms such as health informatics, biomedical informatics, or nursing informatics that name specific subfields.

Common Mistakes

Informatics are a growing field.
Informatics is a growing field.
informatics is uncountable and always takes a singular verb.
She studied informatics and computer.
She studied informatics and computer science.
computer alone is too broad; name the field (computer science or information technology).

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Informatics, information science, data science, and computer science all deal with digital information but differ in scope and emphasis. Information science is the oldest of the four, rooted in library and documentation studies — it focuses on how information is organized, classified, and retrieved. Informatics, by contrast, places greater weight on the technological systems and digital tools that enable those processes. Data science is a newer, applied field centred on extracting insights from large datasets through statistics and machine learning; it cares less about storage architecture and more about analysis. Computer science is the broadest of the group: it covers hardware design, programming languages, algorithms, and theoretical computation, while informatics stays closer to the information itself. As a rough guide, if the focus is on building a search engine's ranking algorithm, that is computer science; if the focus is on how that search engine should organize and label millions of documents so users can find them, that is informatics.

information sciencedata sciencecomputer science ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • informatics research
  • informatics program
  • informatics degree
  • informatics specialist
  • informatics department

Phrases

  • field of informatics

Prepositions

  • in informatics
  • of informatics

Etymology

FrenchEnglish

Informatics is a blend formed from 'information' and 'automatic'. It was coined in the 1960s as a calque of the French word 'informatique', itself a blend of 'information' and 'automatique'. The term entered English academic use in the 1970s to describe the study of automated information processing, and has since expanded to cover health informatics, biomedical informatics, and other subfields.

First known use

1967

1967, in the meaning defined above