Bachelor of Informatics (Phasing in 2014) at Polytechnic of Namibia

What is Informatics?

Informatics is the study of computational systems, especially those for data storage and retrieval. According to ACM Europe and Informatics Europe, informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which the central notion is transformation of information.

Overview

Informatics is important because, in the past 10 years, powerful computer, software, and information technologies have been developed to enable health care organizations to automate some of the work of decision making, for improved quality of care and cost control, and for successful managed care contracting.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an example of informatics?

Health informatics, which is the intersection of people, technology, and data to improve the safety and quality of patient care, can be found in many forms. A few examples include patient portals, electronic medical records (EMRs), telehealth, healthcare apps, and a variety of data reporting tools.

What is informatics in simple words?

Informatics is the study of the structure, behaviour, and interactions of natural and engineered computational systems. Informatics studies the representation, processing, and communication of information in natural and engineered systems. It has computational, cognitive and social aspects.

Is informatics the same as computer science?

Computer science is focused on the design of hardware and software Technology that provides computation. Informatics, in general, studies the intersection of people, information, and technology systems.

How can informatics affect our society?

Informatics provides the technologies, best practices and foundations for construction, development, and growth of the world’s social networking services, by enabling simultaneous transmission of multimedia content like video conferencing, chatting, photo sharing etc. It tends to reduce costs of communication.

Is informatics an engineer?

Engineering Informatics is related to information engineering, and computational engineering. In general, informatics deals with information processing (unlike matter or energy). Compared to technical informatics, engineering informatics focuses more on software.

How informatics can be used to improve quality of care?

Some essentials include informatics helping identify potentially harmful treatment or prescription errors, refining patient record retrieval, improving accuracy of health insurance and increasing the safety of patient information.

What is the role of informatics in public health?

Public health informatics uses technology and information systems to advance strategies such as surveillance, prevention, preparedness, outbreak management, electronic laboratory reporting, predictive modeling and health promotions.

Why is informatics important to public health?

Specifically, public health informatics supports the mission of disease prevention and health promotion by leveraging information technology solutions, therefore enabling environmental health programs to achieve public health goals more effectively, efficiently, and inexpensively.

Why is informatics important to healthcare?

Among the most common purposes served by health informatics are enabling better collaboration and coordination among healthcare providers, streamlining medical quality assurance processes, improving cost-efficiency in healthcare delivery and increasing accuracy and efficiency in facility/practice management.

Is informatics a good career?

Summary. The health informatics field is an exceptionally good career choice with a wide variety of job titles and jobs available at every degree program level. The starting and average salaries are above average across the country.

What are the use of informatics in modern world?

In the English-speaking world, the term informatics was first widely used in the compound medical informatics, taken to include “the cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of medical practice, education, and research, including information science and the technology to support these tasks”.

Is informatics the same as data science?

The difference between health informatics versus data science comes down to how and where the data is used. Data science offers more options to use your talents in a myriad of industries and fields. Health informatics is a specialized data science role within healthcare organizations.

Is a degree in informatics worth IT?

Yes, a masters in health informatics is worth it for many students. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting 15% job growth in healthcare occupations over the next 10 years. Common healthcare informatics careers include administrators, data analysts, project managers, IT consultants and computer system specialists.

What is Informatic course?

Informatics is a multi-disciplinary subject, where information, Information Systems, and the integration thereof into the organization, are studied for the benefit of the entire system (individual, organization and community).

Which is better computer science or IT?

Most of the experts say, there is no difference between CS and IT. It is just that CS is taught as an Engineering level course in major Universities. In case if your choice is Computer Science, then you must take up Mathematics and Science in high level to require Computer Knowledge.