A bio-medical informatics perspective on human factors understanding human factors influence in HIT-enabled institutions.

OBJECTIVES To summarize current excellent research in the field of bio-medical informatics human factors. METHODS 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. RESULTS 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. CONCLUSIONS Convincing the clinicians of the HIT potential gains is still a challenge. But the HIT community will also have to give birth to interdisciplinary research and clear methods to optimize implementations and subsequent achievement of managerial objectives. The best paper selection of articles on human factors shows examples of excellent research on methods concerning original options to once again assess the importance of HIT and take into account the healthcare personnel psychology when confronted to the adoption of new tools and processes.