Informatics Primer: A look inside a growing industry
Informatics Overview
Informatics 101
The Informatics Corridor
What is an Informatics Company?
Informatics Resources Online
Informatics Overview
Informatics touches everything. We encounter it when we sign on to a website to download our financial information, when we work on a corporate computer network, even in our doctor’s office. Informatics and its various applications already influences a significant part of our lives, and yet the average person doesn’t have a clear understanding of what it is.
Most simply: Informatics is the storage, analysis and use of data.
Informatics touches every single industry in business. We find it in the medical, transportation, marketing, government, information technology, financial fields and so much more. It is a major component of our life, and it’s only just starting as a separately identified industry.
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Informatics 101
Informatics is how we handle the data overflow now and in the future.
It’s how businesses capture and analyze the data so necessary to life and business today.
It’s how humans take the data, take what comes out of analyzing the data and then take the next step with the information.
It is the overlap of technology, content and people.
Some definitions:
Technologies that can derive knowledge from immense data sets and help humans cope with “information overload.”
- Mark Sauter, J2 Strategies
The acquisition, storage, and use of information or data
The sciences concerned with gathering, manipulating, storing, retrieving and classifying recorded information
The collection, classification, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of recorded knowledge
Informatics Areas:
Agricultural; Bioinformatics; Biomedical; Chemical Informatics; Cognitive Science; Complex Systems; Computer Science; Communication and Culture; Cybersecurity; Data visualization; Data mining; Economics; Environmental; Fine Arts; Geography; Health Informatics; Human Computer Interaction; Instructional Systems technology; Interior Design; Journalism; Laboratory Informatics; Linguistics; Mathematics; Music Informatics; Manufacturing; New Media; Petrochemical; Pharmaceutical; Political Science; Public Health; Psychology; Public and Environmental Affairs; Telecommunications and more. Even MySpace - or more broadly online social networking communities – is an Informatics area.
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The Informatics Corridor
The largest part of the “Informatics Corridor” lies in Maryland, and is the moniker given to describe the region where many informatics companies, labs and federal agencies operate.
The Informatics Corridor is a region stretching roughly from Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Northeast Maryland down to Northern Virginia, but the centrifuge of the corridor is an area covering western Anne Arundel County and eastern Howard County, with fingers of Informatics extending into areas of Montgomery and Prince George’s County.
Within the Informatics Corridor lies a bounty of innovation, leading-edge companies, and dedicated labs and researchers that combine to create a center of continuing development and growth for the nascent Informatics industry. Government agencies such as the National Security Agency and other Department of Defense agencies support continued informatics development with the many programs and contracts awarded each year to area and regional companies. Laboratories such as the National Institute of Health, NASA and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center provide ongoing research, use of informatics and practical applications. Emergent technology companies provide the systems, computer software, consulting and other business services that furthers the industry along. Area universities and colleges provide classes and programming that enriches the educational field and workforce.
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What is an Informatics Company?
Many Informatics companies don’t even know they fall into this burgeoning classification.
You are likely an informatics company if:
-- You have software that searches, sorts or analyzes data;
-- You are involved in the acquisition, storage and use of information/data;
-- You have a solution that helps customers deal with "information overload."
The AATC currently has a running database of Informatics companies. If you think you might be an informatics company, let us know by emailing laura@aatechcouncil.org
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Informatics Resources Online
Indiana University School of Informatics
Ebracing the data waves: County firms finding role in informatics: The Capital newspaper news article
Informatics Coalition: representing the informatics industry in the Greater Maryland region.
Informatics Defined: Corridor Inc. article
Uncovering Informatics: Corridor Inc. article by Steve Walker
Informatics Presentation to the AATC: by Michael Dunn, Dean of the School of Informatics at Indiana University.
The Business of Connecting the Dots: The $1 billion security and informatics market. Chesapeake Innovation Center Report, November 2005
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