Welcome Messages

It is our great honor to host the UOEH International Symposium 2024, which will be held on November 8-9, 2024 at the University in Kitakyushu, Japan. The symposium will focus on the theme of “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Human Factors and Ergonomics: how should we apply the disruptive technologies to occupational health” and include poster discussion sessions.

The UOEH was established in 1978 under the Industrial Safety and Health Act of 1972 to train occupational physicians experienced in occupational health management. The university's purposes are to provide education, conduct research, and promote medical science, nursing science, and other healthcare sciences based on the Act. We are currently the only medical university in the world that serves as a training institution for “Occupational Health Physicians” and “Occupational Healthcare Professionals”.

Since establishing the International Center in 2022, we have promoted international exchange activities in the spirit of our founding, fostering a global perspective. We must closely monitor workers' health and their working environment from a medical perspective at the global level. Based on this background, the UOEH International Symposium 2023 successfully held a discussion on “Digital Occupational Health,” emphasizing the importance of digitalization, particularly digitalizing physiological information related to health, labor, and disease.

Moreover, the role and importance of AI in the multiple fields have been emerging. AI can analyze vast amounts of physiological measurement information (big data) obtained from workers and patients via the Internet of things (IoT) to create and dramatically improve information value that can be linked to health promotion and optimal treatment practices, and we need to work toward DX (digital Transformation). That is our spirit to select the main theme this year.

While we warmly welcome attendees to visit Kitakyushu during a beautiful season and join us in person for the symposium, we also inform you that the event will be partly held online. We highly recommend applying for the poster session. Despite the present unstable circumstances in our global society, we hope that this meeting will foster new and positive expectations for the future. We sincerely thank you for your support and cooperation with these endeavors.

On behalf of the steering committee, we warmly welcome you to join the UOEH International Symposium 2024 on Occupational Health.

The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) or Society 5.0 concepts have accelerated technological progress across various industrial sectors. Such innovation through disruptive technologies using Artificial Intelligence (AI) rapidly makes our traditional work styles transform into new ones. While technological innovation brings us dramatically to increase labor productivity, it has concerns about yielding new occupational health challenges for workers.

The role of Human Factors and Ergonomics exists as a practical science that balances such ambivalence between system performance and humans' well-being. Understanding the multiple and complex interactions between humans and the components of the system can create the conditions for efficient, healthy, safe, and fulfilling work.

This symposium will provide a comprehensive exchange of views focusing on both positive and negative aspects of new work systems using AI like digital health technologies in healthcare, Robotic, intelligent and autonomous systems (RIAS) in service, or human-robot collaboration in production systems, and so on.

We are planning an exciting program at this conference to serve the participants to explore current and future research directions on occupational health in the AI era, and extend our networks between researchers and practitioners engaged in Industry-academia-government-private sectors in Asian countries.

We hope you will have a productive and fruitful time at this conference.