['To summarize current excellent research in the field of bio-medical informatics human factors.', 'We provide a synopsis of the articles selected for the IMIA yearbook 2009, from which we attempt to derive a synthetic overview of the activity and new trends in the field. A special attention was made to pick papers also from non bio-medical informatics specialized journals and to perform a worldwide selection.', 'while the state of the research in the field of human factors is illustrated by a set of fairly heterogeneous studies, it is possible to identify trends. Thus, clearly, the importance of issues related to healthcare information technologies (HIT) adoption, still occupies a central role in the field.'] Do a bio-medical informatics perspective on human factors understanding human factors influence in HIT-enabled institutions?