Foundation and Mission of the Association

Application of computer has been rapidly expanding in all the fields related with humans, i.e., natural sciences, social sciences, human sciences and also medicine.

A lot of applications of the computer to the medical field, such as medical measurement, management and analysis of medical data, medical diagnosis, bio-control, artificial organs, management of medicines and administration of hospitals, have been introduced. And these kinds of medical applications will become more and more important in the coming century.

On the other hand, how to apply the computer for the processing of medical data, the property of which is generally unstable on time, remains unstudied. That is, until recent years, most of the processing have been concerned with crisp data such as "150 mHg for blood pressure" and "38.5 degrees for body temperature".
Furthermore, interactive communication between doctors and patients is usually done via diagnosis terminologies (but uncertain and vague words) such as "a little bit high for blood pressure", "somewhat fever", "something pain in abdomen", "dull for body" and so on.

Thus, natural language processing technology in the 1980s was found to be very useful for the realization of artificial expert systems in providing assistance with respect to the interactive communication between doctors and patients. However, it was noticed that the approach restricted the way to only the symbolic algorithm is very difficult for processing vague and uncertain words.

So the appearance of new methodology to enable the processing of even vague words, satisfactorily has been long awaited.

On the other hand, during the mid 1980, it was noticed that the fuzzy set theory which was created by the renowned Prof. Lotfi A Zadeh in 1965, is applicable to several kinds of engineering. Furthermore, the invention of the fuzzy IC chip done by Prof. Takeshi Yamakawa in 1987, motivated the world wide fuzzy engineering boom. It fueled the dream for the realization of a fuzzy computer.

That is, the fuzzy computer was thought to play a important role in the implementation of the 6th generation computer, combining the emerging new methodologies and technologies such as neural networks, chaos and genetic algorithms in addition to the traditional symbolic algorithms.

Consequently, the concept of fuzzy computation was introduced and branded as the new engineering method to treat vague ( not probabilistic ) information, e.g., "something a little bit" , "fairly" etc.

The method enabled us to find a new powerful technology of fuzzy reasoning without numerical equations, combining the membership function (which is named and introduced by Prof. Zadeh) and the corresponding vague words.
Furthermore, these kinds of new methodologies enabled us to imagine the capability of realizing new expert systems more flexible and friendly to humans than those currently existing in the medicine, which are mostly based on the symbolic oriented approach.

Targeting the new expansion of these methodologies to the applicable engineering field that concerns human life, i.e., medicine, health, welfare, and mental feeling and emotion, the Biomedical Fuzzy System Association was founded in May, 1987.

The association was authorized as a new society by the same name "Biomedical Fuzzy Systems Association, BMFSA" in December,1993.

1997 was the memorial year to celebrate the successful development of the association.

As for official journal, it was first published in 1995, under the name "Biomedical Fuzzy and Human Sciences,Vol.1". The journal has continued its publication since then.

The Journal has continued its publication since then. From the last year, 1998, The name of the journal has re-named by "Biomedical Soft Computing and Human Sciences", aiming it to be an important international journal on the aria, combining biomedicine and human sciences, also aiming it more widely acceptable journal whose methodologies are not restricted only to "Fuzzy", but to " Soft Computing" which is the organized methodology to promote the academic fusion of several ones , such as Neural Network, Chaos, Genetic Algorithm and Statistics and so on.

Furthermore, from this year, the official journal of BMFSA in Japanese will be published in autumn.

With respect to annual meeting, it was first held in 1987 in the beautiful city, Kurashiki (Okayama prefecture in Japan). After that it has been held every year in several cities in Japan, i.e., Tokyo, Osaka, Iizuka, Morioka, and so on. The 10th memorial conference in 1997 was held again in Kurashiki to celebrate the foundation of the association.

The meeting in 1998 was held on November 7-8, at Osaka Electro-Communication University, Osaka, Japan. It is programmed that the 12th annual meeting in this year,1999 will be held on November 16-17 at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

As mentioned above, the association has several programs for activity to promote the academic fusion of several methodologies, such as fuzzy theory, neural networks, chaotic theory, genetic algorithm and statistics ( These are organized as the name, Soft Computing by the Prof. Zadeh).

Thus, we promote the mutual communication and enlightenment of the members, via the performance of the annual meetings every year, the international conferences, the symposiums and seminars, and the publication of their several proceedings as well as the official journals.