The primary research of occupational medicine include health hazards posed by various occupational factors, development of preventive measures, as well as epidemiological studies, occupational disease surveillance technology, occupational health promotion, and occupational medical monitoring.

Research on Occupational Medicine

Research on Occupational Medicine is related to the study of various occupational factors and health hazards, as well as the prevention of occupational diseases, to further protect and promote the health of the workers. The responsibility of the Occupational Medicine Division includes epidemiological study on occupational diseases, prevention of occupational diseases, health management, labor health promotion, and research on occupational psychology and physiology. Primary research orientation is focused on monitoring occupational diseases and analyzing health data, epidemiological study on occupational diseases, prevention of occupational diseases, labor health promotion, and occupational biological monitoring.

Monitoring of occupational diseases and analyzing health data

The monitoring of occupational diseases and the analysis of health records are ways of understanding the onset of occupational diseases. By joining efforts of a reporting system of occupational diseases and the collection of data from various channels (i.e. insurance data such as Labor or National Health Insurance), more accurate occurrence rate of occupational diseases may be documented, and more effective preventive methods for occupational diseases may be developed.

Survey on Occupational Diseases and Occupational Epidemiology Research

Due to rapid industrial and commercial development in Taiwan in recent years, complex production tehnologies and various new chemical substances have continually been applied in the work place. Workers are exposed to more and more complex working environment, leading to the emergence of various occupational diseases. Thus, the purposes of this research lie in the surveying of occupational diseases to gain an understanding on the current situation of occupational diseases, establishing various epidemiological data on occupational diseases, studying hazardous factors derived from epidemiology research to formulate measures to prevent occupational diseases, and investigating and fulfilling the needs of policies and regulatory requirements. In addition to chemical hazardous factors, research emphasis is also focused on new emerging occupational diseases and physical hazardous factors.

Research on Labor Health Promotion

Not only does occupational health concern with the prevention of occupational diseases and hazards, it is also involved in the active promotion of a healthy, safe, and comfortable working environment. Other objectives of occupational health include maintaining workers' physical fitness and productivity, developing human resources through reshuffling of work assignment and improving the production environment, delaying the actual age at which workers retire, and appropriately introducing potential workers into the job market. This way, productivity may increase through hiring workers that are highly experienced as well as those who will stay on the job, and the health of the workers may be maintained through the prevention of occupational diseases and hazards and the promotion of and assessment of physical fitness in the work environment.

Occupational Biological Monitoring

Hazardous substances enter the human body through various routes. Thus, there is a need to monitor the hazardous materials inside the human body through biological medicine technology to serve as workers' health hazard biological monitor index. Biomedical technologies are employed in epidemiological studies of hazardous factors and metabolic mechanism to achieve early detection and early prevention, and serve as a reference for permissible exposure limit.