What is InformSoft.org?
InformSoft.org is a website used to distribute and organize Informatics software for collecting and analyzing medical history for patients in third world countries. The project was started by GlobalBrigades for use in their Medical Brigades in Honduras (See Current State) but was never fully deployed into production. We're taking a second stab at this by developing and maintaining a Future State and vision to continue GlobalBrigades' vision and deploy the Informatics software as part of every Medical Brigade they run.
Why Informatics Software?
Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information. It also develops its own conceptual and theoretical foundations and utilizes foundations developed in other fields. Since the advent of computers, individuals and organizations increasingly process information digitally. This has led to the study of informatics that has computational, cognitive and social aspects, including study of the social impact of information technologies.
In some situations, information science and informatics are used interchangeably. However, some consider information science to be a subarea of the more general field of informatics.
Used as a compound, in conjunction with the name of a discipline, as in medical informatics, bioinformatics, etc., it denotes the specialization of informatics to the management and processing of data, information and knowledge in the named discipline, and the incorporation of informatic concepts and theories to enrich the other discipline; it has a similar relationship to library science.