informatics
n. uncountablen. the study of how information is collected, stored, and shared using computers. It looks at how people and technology work together to handle data.
n. the science of processing data for storage and retrieval; the study of the structure, behaviour, and interactions of natural and engineered computational systems.
She decided to study health informatics to improve hospital records.
The university's informatics department focuses on how social media data can predict consumer trends.
Advances in bioinformatics have allowed researchers to map the human genome by applying informatics principles to vast biological datasets.
Coined 1967 from information + -ics; possibly influenced by automation and automatic. German Informatik dates from 1957, French informatique from 1962.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Usually takes a singular verb despite the plural-looking ending.
Last updated May 11, 2026