Informatics

Informatics is the study of computational systems. According to the ACM Europe Council and Informatics Europe, informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which the central notion is transformation of information. In other countries, the term "informatics" is used with a different meaning in the context of library science, in which case it is synonymous with data storage and retrieval. In some countries, depending on local interpretations, the term "informatics" is used synonymously to mean information systems, information science, information theory, information engineering, information technology, information processing, or other theoretical or practical fields. In Germany, the term informatics almost exactly corresponds to modern computer science. Accordingly, universities in continental Europe usually translate "informatics" as computer science, or sometimes information and computer science, although technical universities may translate it as computer science & engineering. In the United States, however, the term informatics is mostly used in context of data science, library science or its applications in healthcare (health informatics), where it first appeared in the US. The University of Washington uses this term to refer to social computing. In some countries, this term is associated with natural computation and neural computation. The Government of Canada uses the term to refer to operational units offering network and computer services to the various departments. Computer science#Etymology and History of computer science In 1956, the German informatician Karl Steinbuch and engineer Helmut Gröttrup coined the word Informatik when they developed the Informatik-Anlage for the Quelle mail-order management, one of the earliest commercial applications of data processing. In April 1957, Steinbuch published a paper called Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung ("Informatics: Automatic Information Processing").