The field of population informatics is the systematic study of populations via secondary analysis of massive data collections (termed " big data ") about people. Scientists in the field refer to this massive data collection as the social genome , denoting the collective digital footprint of our society. Population informatics applies data science to social genome data to answer fundamental questions about human society and population health much like bioinformatics applies data science to human genome data to answer questions about individual health. It is an emerging research area at the intersection of SBEH (Social, Behavioral, Economic, & Health) sciences, computer science, and statistics in which quantitative methods and computational tools are used to answer fundamental questions about our society.