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Informatics

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This article is about the discipline. For other uses, see Informatics (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Library science or Information technology.

Informatics is the study of computational systems.[1][2] The central notion is the transformation of information.[1][3] According to Committee on European Computing Education (CECE),[4] a joint committee between ACM Europe and Informatics Europe's report "Informatics Education in Europe: Are We All in The Same Boat?", informatics is European equivalent for computer science and computing as a profession.[5] In the United States, however, informatics is often confused with library science, where this term was later introduced separately in a different sense.[6]

Introduction

Supplementary to matter and energy, information is the third essence for modeling the natural world.[7] In natural and artificial systems, information is carried at many levels, ranging, for example, from biological molecules (genetic informatics, cellular computing) and hardware devices (technical informatics, computer engineering) through nervous systems (neuroinformatics, neurocomputing, cognitive informatics) and software systems (engineering informatics, software engineering) and on to societies and large-scale distributed systems.[1]

Independence from matter

Information and its digital or real computation is independent of the material type of information carrier - it can be an mechanical, electrical, biological, optical, wetware, among others (see also: alternative computing).

Cultural gap

Informatics Forum
Informatics Forum, completed in 2008. It houses over 130 researchers of the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics.

In popular mind, in some countries term informatics is used synonymously with fields of information systems, information science, information theory, information engineering, information technology or other practical computing fields, depending of local interpretation of information processing. In the United States, however, term informatics is only used in context of data science, library science[8] or its applications in healthcare (biomedical informatics),[9][10] where the term informatics first appeared in the US. On the other hand, in some countries the term informatics is associated with study the natural and neural computation.[1][11] University of Washington use term informatics for social computing.[12] In continental Europe, universities usually translate informatics as computer science (or sometimes information and computer science), while technical universities as computer science & engineering.[13][14] According to past former ACM president Peter J.Denning and his article in Communications of the ACM,[15] computer science is a science of information processess and their interactions with the world, and is synonymous with informatics.[15] According to University of Edinburgh, informatics is the study of the structure, behaviour, and interactions of natural and engineered computational systems.[1] According to ACM Europe and Informatics Europe, terms informatics and computer science refers to the same discipline.

United States - Europe related fields[5][16]
United States Germany Russia France Italy English transcription
Computer Science, Computing Informatik информатика (latinized: informatika) Informatique Informatica Informatics
Theoretical Computer Science Theoretische Informatik компьютерная наука Informatique théorique Informatica teorica Theoretical Informatics
Computer Engineering Technische Informatik компьютерная инженерия Ingénierie or génie informatique Ingegneria informatica Technical Informatics, Engineering Informatics
Neurocomputing Neuroinformatik нейроинформатика Neuro-informatique Neuroinformatica Neuroinformatics, Cognitive informatics

Professional organisations

Konrad Zuse
German informatician Konrad Zuse, inventor of world's first programmable computer, first high-level programming language and first process control program, author of Rechnender Raum concept and creator of analog computer Helixturm.[17][18]

Research topics

Computer scientists (informaticians) study computational processes and systems. Computing Research Repository (CoRR) classification distinguishes the following main areas of computer science (alphabetic order):[19][20][21]

Modern fields

  • evolutionary informatics - according to Evolutionary Informatics Lab, evolutionary informatics studies how evolving systems incorporate, transform, and export information.[22]

Journals and conferences

See also: List of computer science conferences and List of important publications in theoretical computer science

Academic schools and departments

Etymology

See also: Computer science § Etymology, and History of computer science

In Europe

In 1956, the German informatician Karl Steinbuch coined the word Informatik by publishing a paper called Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung ("Informatics: Automatic Information Processing").[56] The morphology—informat-ion + -ics—uses "the accepted form for names of sciences, as conics, mathematics, linguistics, optics, or matters of practice, as economics, politics, tactics",[57] and so, linguistically, the meaning extends easily to encompass both the science of information and the practice of information processing. The German word Informatik is usually translated to English as[58] computer science by universities or computer science & engineering by technical universities (German equivalents for institutes of technology). Depending on the context, informatics is also translated into computing, scientific computing or information and computer technology. The French term informatique was coined in 1962 by Philippe Dreyfus.[59] In the same month was also proposed independently by Walter F. Bauer (1924–2015) and associates who co-founded software company Informatics Inc. The term for the new discipline quickly spread throughout Europe, but it did not catch on in the United States. Over the years, many different definitions of informatics have been developed, most of them claim that the essence of informatics is one of these concepts: information processing, algorithms, computation, information, algorithmic processes, computational processes or computational systems.[60][1]

In United States

The earliest uses of the term informatics in the United States was during the 1950s with the beginning of computer use in healthcare.[61] Early practitioners interested in the field soon learned that there were no formal education programs, and none emerged until the late 1960s. Unfortunately, they introduced the term informatics only in the context of archival science, which is only a small part of informatics. Professional development, therefore, played a significant role in the development of health informatics.[61] According to Imhoff et al., 2001, healthcare informatics is not only the application of computer technology to problems in healthcare, but covers all aspects of generation, handling, communication, storage, retrieval, management, analysis, discovery, and synthesis of data information and knowledge in the entire scope of healthcare. Furthermore, they stated that the primary goal of health informatics can be distinguished as follows: To provide solutions for problems related to data, information, and knowledge processing. To study general principles of processing data information and knowledge in medicine and healthcare.[62][63] The term health informatics quickly spread throughout the United States in various forms such as nursing informatics, public health informatics or medical informatics. Analogous terms were later introduced for use of computers in various fields, such as business informatics, forest informatics, legal informatics etc. Unfortunately, these fields still mainly use term informatics in context of library science. Later in the United States, next absurd term such as computational informatics were developed, while all informatics is computational by its nature.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "What is Informatics? University of Edinburgh" (PDF).
  2. ^ "INFORMATICS | Bedeutung im Cambridge Englisch Wörterbuch". dictionary.cambridge.org (in German).
  3. ^ "What is Informatics? - Definition from Techopedia". Techopedia.com.
  4. ^ "Committee on European Computing Education (CECE)". europe.acm.org.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ a b "Are We All In The Same Boat? ACM & Informatics Europe" (PDF).
  6. ^ Wellisch, Hans (1972-07-01). "From Information Science to Informatics: a terminological investigation". Journal of librarianship. 4 (3): 157–187. doi:10.1177/096100067200400302. ISSN 0022-2232.
  7. ^ Wang, Yingxu (2003-08-01). "On Cognitive Informatics". Brain and Mind. 4 (2): 151–167. doi:10.1023/A:1025401527570. ISSN 1573-3300.
  8. ^ Wellisch, Hans (1972-07-01). "From Information Science to Informatics: a terminological investigation". Journal of librarianship. 4 (3): 157–187. doi:10.1177/096100067200400302. ISSN 0022-2232.
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  10. ^ "Informatics Major". ischool.uw.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
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  17. ^ PDF Raúl Rojas: Konrad Zuse’s Legacy: The Architecture of the Z1 and Z3
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  61. ^ a b Nelson, Ramona; Staggers, Nancy (8 December 2016). Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach. Elsevier Health Sciences. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-323-40225-5.
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  63. ^ Nelson, R. & Staggers, N. Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach. St. Louis: Mosby, 2013. Print. (p.4,7)

Further reading

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