Is Wearable Tech a Worthy Investment

welcome everybody appreciate you uh attending our webinar today uh the topic is is wearable technology a worthy investment for you my name is Steve Simon I'm a senior risk control manager here at safety National and we definitely appreciate you uh taking some time today and going through the the presentation just a couple housekeeping items that I want to address with you any questions that you have throughout the presentation uh feel free to put that in the questions panel if you're not sure if you have any questions about how to get your questions submitted or you're having uh you need some help with any troubleshooting just put that in the questions panel as well and our team would be glad to help you uh in addition you will also notice we have two handouts that you can download at any time uh during the presentation one is a comparison Matrix of the wearable technology vendors and providers we've done quite a bit of research and I think you would find it very helpful we'll be touching and going through a little bit of that during the webinar and also a resource handout this will actually give you links to the wearable technology vendors and providers that are out there along with some research articles and articles that we have written on wearable technology I will mention and also remind you at the end of the presentation if you go to our website safetynational.com there'll be an opportunity for you to sign up take a look at our carrier Chronicles they have a lot more information various other topics including more on wearable technology and if you do sign up you'll will receive the bi-monthly email okay and you will get a copy of this everyone that is registered we'll get a copy within 48 hours in your email the objectives today we just I want to talk just a little bit about not spend too much time a little bit of the history a little bit of an overview of what's going on with wearable technology many of you know it has really evolved into the workplace especially the last several years um probably many of you have seen it post pandemic you have started to attend conferences and maybe even have spoke with some of the wearable technology vendors that have been out there and want to just talk as well about the type of wearable technologies that are in the workplace along with potential benefits of wearables and then also going into some of the challenges so just a little bit of the pros and the cons around implementation and a couple insights as well um that everyone should be aware of if it's something that you're thinking about piloting and moving forward on we're going to talk about that and some best practices that could be very helpful I know there's a lot of interest around the cost and investment around wearable technology so we'll do our best to try to provide some parameters and share a little bit of information at least what we've learned and then I do want to just talk also a little bit about some of the emerging technology around the ergonomic applications that are out there and some of you might know what I might be referring to but we'll get into it in the presentation and this is definitely a great alternative for those organizations that may not be ready to invest in wearable technology and then I want to excuse me then I want to do wrap up the presentation with some research and validation on the wearable technology I think the science is very important and just kind of provide you with some information so you're aware about what type of research has been completed we know the wearable Market is really growing rapidly Technologies changing you know wearable technology uh it could be dated back to um the year 1286 when they started experimenting with different types of wearable glasses um I'd say probably in 1975 is when we were most enamored with the watch calculator for those of you who were born before that or right around that time period you'll know what I'm kind of referring to um five years later we were even more impressed with the Sony Walkman when that came out 10 years after that we started getting into wearable Wireless webcams um and then I'd say in the year 2009 2010 most of us have started to really get into that activity trackers the Fitbit and then five years later after that the Apple watch came out and I'd say between 2006 2013 has really been the era that when we all started kind of taking notice of the wearable technology Market as you could see on the screen here the market continues uh to grow um it's a it's an unbelievable um market right now 61.3 billion uh dollars and it's expected to kind of grow from there upwards into 2030 um there's really you know 533 million total wearable devices out there that shipped out in 2021 and many of the wearable technology providers and vendors out there uh did their best to adapt during the pandemic and I'll talk a little bit about how some of that technology has evolved most of you might be most most of you may be familiar with the more common type of wearable technology out there which is the inertial measurement unit sensors these are wearable sensors uh this is what you you typically most of you may see when you attend conferences or you speak to some of the wearable technology vendors out there there's a very strong focus on manual Material Handling monitoring the posture so many of these vendors uh are kind of focused a little bit on job tasks especially around repetitive bending um you know twisting pulling carrying these kinds of things that these types of tasks that definitely can impact uh you know and and having the the technology record uh the data the idea behind it is uh the artificial intelligence built in chips that are built into the technology is sensing the movements and when they first came out on the market uh the focus really was uh to try to change the behavior of the worker and also provide enough data back to the workplace for those individuals who were looking at the dashboards and the data to determine um what actions what steps really needed to need to be completed or changed in the workplace uh to address manual Material Handling so most when the sensors wearable sensors really first came out most of them not all but I'd say most have this have to response and uh what this is is a vibration it's a low vibration that really reminded the workers in real time as they were doing it um in terms of the repetitive bending the twisting anything to do with posture just to give them that gentle reminder to help kind of change the behavior of the worker and the idea really was uh at the end of the day or at the end of the week uh depending on how or how the organization utilized uh the data it was kind of geared to help coach provide some feedback uh Implement those corrective actions with workers as well as departments uh that had a lot of the manual Material Handling exposure uh what vendors what many of the wearable technology vendors found is that that in itself wasn't enough to really sell every industry on the capabilities of the wearable technology so it has since evolved in many of these wearable sensors now not only um will still provide the alerts and the data for the lower lumbar lower lumbar support and the posture monitoring um but they have built in other components uh to address temperature warnings like extreme heat or cold um loan worker safety was another one this was something they were looking at during the pandemic in terms of distancing if everyone was wearing the wearable sensors it allowed the organization to understand if individual workers were complying with the distancing uh and also communication was essentially built into the device where if someone did have a slip or fall or didn't respond during a period of time um yeah the device would alert someone who's monitoring that that dashboard and the technology as it is it's uh feeding into the system also same thing forklift driving this is a big bilateral collision avoidance this is something where um it will alert the driver the some of these devices have since then been modified to attach to the forklift as well as workers other workers so if I I'm walking in close proximity um I'm going to get a vibration to let me know that the forklift is uh nearby same thing with the driver uh he'll also be alerted um and some of that could also come not just in the form of vibration but other audible warning signals um and other visual displays that can essentially be set and built in to the wearable technology it was really a way to kind of expand the wearable technology market and to make it a little bit more um user friendly and try to incorporate other Industries and allow organizations to get the most out of the wearable technology the key of course is the more workers that utilize this type of wearable sensor comes data um and a lot of data definitely comes in depending on the number of employees individual workers who are utilizing uh the wearables technology and the key here really is um how the data is being managed right who's looking at it how often is it looked at most of this is comprised into dashboards and so that makes it a little bit easier in terms of trying to manage the data you will um depending on each of the vendors many of the dashboards might vary slightly that the concept is generally the same it allows you to kind of drill down by individual workers departments tasks kind of depending on what the individuals were doing um and then from there the key is to take actionable steps and to implement those action items just to kind of give you a little bit of a visual on wearable technology and what that kind of looks like we don't endorse or support any particular wearable technology but these are some of the more common ones that are out there this is not an exhaustive list of everything that's there but some of these maybe you might already be somewhat familiar with or you've seen um these are very small and very Compact and the idea is usually depending on the vendor some of these are strapped either to the arm as you can see with make you safe um some with the module some prefer you know strapping it around the waist the belt and some can even be strapped towards uh the back as well so it really kind of depends on the vendor this is continuously evolving as well the idea around here is to kind of make it small and Compact and not really get in the way of the employee or the worker in terms of conducting the job or the task but these are some of the vendors that are out there some of these are on our resource our handout list and so you could certainly contact them certainly get a little bit more information on each of them the other side of the wearable technology is the exosuits um this one's a little probably more advanced this may not pertain to every industry there's two types of exosuits that are out there uh the power hydraulic type which you see on the upper right hand column off to the right on the upper side this is something that kind of helps support the upper and lower Limbs and just take away a lot of the exertion and strain associated with particular tasks the and again I think sometimes with this the price um pricing is driven could be a driving factor which we'll get into we'll touch on a little bit uh the passive spring based is more what you see on the bottom um this one typically is usually just a vast uh little bit a little bit easier uh for workers to wear um but instead of having to hold something that's awkward and heavy uh like that camera uh you could see how it easily just attaches uh to this vest it takes a lot of the load off to the lower back the arms the shoulder so it takes a lot of the strain uh most of the exosuits are more closer to the one that you see on the bottom most are more passive spring based and that Focus really is to identify to help with the upper extremities and again it just really depends on the task we'll get into a little bit of more of the pros and the cons but the biggest challenge with the exosuits is that when you take exertion or strain off of one part of the body it does transfer stress to other parts as well in terms of being able to compensate for what they're trying to do and complete the task so those are things that we do have to consider are things you should consider if this is something that you you want to Pilot uh this is just the list of uh other exosuits there's a lot of different vendors out there some of these vendors uh are some of our universities uh that have worked to partner with organizations uh around the research uh I would say there's a little bit more research around the exosuits than there are around the wearable sensors wearable sensors are a little bit new say in the last five plus years or so exosuits have been around a little bit longer um I would say that um there is more opportunity uh around the exosuits for universities that it's more uh it's something that universities definitely want to get into a little bit more not to say that the wearable sensors um aren't an opportunity I think it's still relatively new there's a lot of startup companies around the wearable sensors um so some of the the research on that and we'll get into some examples here on the research coming up that I would say the wearable sensors you you're not going to find too much research out there at the moment and there's probably reasons for that and I'll get into that but I just wanted to at least share with you what these look like um some of the exosuit vendors that are out there and this is all on our handout list as well so you can definitely explore and preview and contact some of these vendors uh as well one of the studies and I tried to find ones that at least were not too old at least ones that were a little bit more on the recent side last five years or so uh this one isn't too this study here uh in 2019 took a look at eight different types of wearable products these ones were a little bit more focused on uh different variations of what we would consider the EXO suits um and so what came out of this and I'm just kind of giving you a quick synopsis we don't have time to get into all the details um but the main conclusions were that some of the exertion was reduced and there was some benefits around that but as some of the employees compensated many of some of the stress was um uh some of the stress around the exertion was located at other parts of the body so that increased overall feedback from the workers some liked it some didn't some found that the tasks were a little bit easier some didn't adoption and buy-in really tough difficult certainly I would say with the wearable sensors to a degree even probably a little bit more challenging with the exosuits the exosuits uh do have some disadvantages for adoption with employees and they're buying and we'll get into some of those reasons as you as we go through just a little bit of the research area and I think you'll you'll see it the idea is that we need to be careful or organizations need to be cautious about what they're piloting to make sure they're not bringing on more cumulative trauma or other MSD type of risk factors um as some of the stress does get transferred to other parts of the body this was another study done in 2019 where they look more at the vest the exosuit this one's called escobest and there was a hundred employees in this group over eight plants most of the feedback was pretty positive from the workers but six months into the study you can see some of the issues or concerns that the workers reported uh a lot of thermal discomfort these vast you know have since evolved and it may continue to evolve as technology evolves but the thermal discomfort uh you know is definitely a factor range of motion it does restrict certain parts of the body in terms of being able to conduct the task workers found out a little bit challenging and the fit and the adjustability was another Factor even though they do come in and different sizes it was still a factor for some and for nine percent of the workers the weight of the vest these these vests are not always light it does add slight I'd say not a ton but there is some weight that is added to the vest especially if you're attaching other tools and things that we saw with the camera that can be uncomfortable for some workers uh there's no question about it that there are benefits associated with the exosuits you know uh again you know it can help to a degree uh increase some performance uh there are some adverse um effects as as we mentioned um and again uh a lot of the impact in terms of sustainability uh because these are quite an investment usually will take longer than six months it could take a couple years before you really kind of see whether this is going to work or it's not going to work um so you know as you continue to gather feedback especially in research studies this one looked at this study um uh took a look at this study I believe was uh in 2020 this study took a look at the upper extremity especially overhead tasks which could be very challenging for some workers this one looked at 27 employees uh pretty even split between male and female before the study no one had reported any injuries in the past 12 months that was very um uh so that was a very important part of the study I will say that in research studies they remove a lot of the variables and the focus is strictly on the product itself and I'm going to be talking about that a little bit when it comes to the wearable sensors uh because there's a lot of questions um that will will get into but there's a lot of um I'd say information that is out there um in terms of claim reduction or percentage of reduction if these uh wearable sensors or wearable technology are utilized and I promise I'll touch on that uh but back to this um uh study um the shoulder range motion uh was reduced by 10 same thing with postural um again there's there's always the risk of slip and fall um uh especially when you are wearing uh you know a wearable technology uh vest but usually they're pretty minimal um and the the biggest benefit I would say is the lower lumbar support spine loading that was reduced by 30 percent um so there are some benefits really again I think it depends on the task itself uh most you know and this is you know again this is just um what most of the vendors or providers are wearable technology then it's out there they're trying to Target more of the distribution centers manufacturing they're starting to get into a little bit of retail not to say other industry trees can't benefit or utilize this but the ones that typically are starting to use a little bit more of it are your distribution centers and and and warehousing I want to just talk a little bit about the emerging technology um around the ergonomic applications because this is a fantastic alternative for those organizations who are not uh ready or um who prefer not to make the investment in the wearable technology space many of you probably already know uh that the two main ones on the market are tamiki ergonomics and velocity EHS they have this software um and what this is uh is a it's an application that goes on your um phones and it allows you to upload a video uh of the task and the program itself uh does all the analysis this has typically been traditionally done by an ergonomist or an ergonomic specialist coming on site evaluating observing taking measurements putting the report together uh so this is again some real-time data that can come out of this task could help quantify risk a lot of the ergonomic methods and tools out there um like the Riva the Rula uh which are rapid Upper Limb assessments rapid entire body assessments including the strain index for exertion and many other methods that ergonomists typically use are essentially built in to the software and it's really running that program autonomously and giving you the results of what typically would be done uh traditionally by hand or by having ergonomous come out not to say that there isn't benefit I'm a big believer in still having their Anonymous come out and help with uh action items and recommendations and so forth this really doesn't take the place of that but it could it's a fantastic opportunity um for those committee members um those safety professionals on others human risk control loss control Consultants going out and conducting these types of assessment and giving some feedback many of these methods and tools that are built in to the program are highly validated it's been researched and of course the biggest plus is the cost around there uh is you'll see really uh it's a pretty simple straightforward process um you know most of us have cameras on our phone it allows us to easily uh upload the task and then uh the dashboard will essentially uh allow you uh to look at the data and determine whether it's on the higher risk and whether action or actionable items need to be taken um but it's a it's it's again a fantastic way to easily analyze get those reports uh of that information out quickly and easily uh without having to spend a lot of time um doing this uh manually uh there's been a lot of questions uh on the cost and the investment what does it look like uh what can I expect to spend and again uh this is talking to about a dozen or so um providers out there I will tell you these are approximate costs these are not exact costs but at least it'll give you an idea of what we're talking about and what you can typically uh expect during either a pilot stage or a full rollout the sensors again this is give or take there's ones out there that might be slightly less slightly more again this is just a very rough range most of the vendors the wearable technology vendors are open to a pilot stage this is something would be a good starting point if it's something you want to consider there are many of the vendors not all but many of them have minimum order required so there is some initial investment up front what's not included in this price is on site support so if you want the vendor to come out or a specialist to come out to help implement or roll that out there's additional costs on top of what you're typically seeing some can kind of walk you through it on your own and it's straightforward um again many of the vendors uh don't really want to stop at the pilot stage it's more profitable for them to kind of work towards the full rollout and there's heavier investment involved for organizations when you're talking full rollouts of entire plants or multiple locations or multiple plants so it's something that uh you need to look at um carefully with a lot of caution as you could see all the way to the right the artificial intelligence the ergonomic applications uh these as we talked about are definitely more cost effective you can expect you know to pay anywhere from maybe six to ten thousand roughly give or take depending if you did it annually versus monthly to have access to the ergonomic applications there may be other risk control or loss control professionals who you may be partnering with that have that technology and if that's the case fantastic but for those that want their own and prefer to do it you could see uh much more reasonable and might be a better starting point for some organizations rather than starting with with the sensors uh you know as we go into the benefits uh as we kind of talked about um the real-time data is the biggest plus here um having you know it's it's a little different than claim data which is reactive right waiting for something to happen and then we kind of look at the trend uh here we can get data right away we can look at it again daily every couple days every week um and this is before uh claims or injuries will typically uh take place uh again it could help build uh based on the data if that's what the organization needs to kind of help build um you know a business case but especially being able to identify critical areas departments Trends patterns ahead of time uh that's that's the biggest Pro here um it's giving you that data and making the analysis this is easy instead of having to send teams out or bring uh not to say there isn't benefit of having safety professionals or loss or risk control Consultants come out on site there definitely is but again on a day-to-day basis looking at that risk analysis and that evaluation trying to manage the data and getting that data that's that's the key uh some will even go as far as kind of looking at uh helping to implement and enhance their employee Wellness programs because it will do other tracking as we talked about especially with steps and movement and things like that so uh those are the the general again this is not an exhaustive list of every uh type of Advantage out there but these are the main ones that you can typically expect certainly you may not see this in the in the pilot stage you may see this more as you work towards a full rollout uh the disadvantages again um as some of you might be thinking about or as you mentioned the haptic feedback on the vibration uh this is going to be challenging uh for uh workers uh not every worker wants to have that vibration go off uh every couple of minutes every couple of seconds um and so uh adoption of of these wearable Technologies uh especially the sensors make it very challenging I'll put it that way um and for some it may not change the behavior May frustrate the employee so having them understand and buy into it up front is really really key as we've talked about especially the EXO suits the range of motion the Comfort uh again are key factors uh the adoption even a little bit more challenging because there has been some research out there on these exosuits um and so you kind of know what to have to work you you know what to look for up front um and getting a pilot stage going with some employees and letting them know what the expectations are and what to expect is very key uh data security and privacy uh big factor for those organizations that have been surveyed um this seems to be the number one issue with employees believe it or not they're very concerned about how the data is going to be utilized the privacy of that data so I I think the key here uh is working with it ramping up uh your data security um and just kind of ensuring even though yeah some of this isn't Medical but uh it is still data um for individual employees and employees don't want that to be used uh in other ways uh against them in any fashion so I think trying to understand and working through this up front uh is definitely a key again how much of the data do you trust again you know these Technologies as we know in these sensors they're they're constantly evolving um and data is data but it's not again it's not the same as getting employee feedback on the job itself so again it really goes hand in hand I think this is a you know uh when we think about wearable technology it's a component of your health and safety program it's a component or a part of your ergonomic program it's not the magic cure uh it's not something that should be a standalone it should be part of a formal program um and then again what action is going to be taken from this data so it's a lot of investment even in the pilot and then the full rollout to go through but not to take the action or not to have Senior Management buy-in which is also very critical to support any of the actionable items that need to take place as a result otherwise employees start to lose Faith um and again the culture starts to shift um and then uh for those that are not using it correctly uh it's starting it's more of a focus on the employees uh than it is the system the process the workplace design the equipment the training everything that goes along with the health and safety program a good ergonomic program those are just things to kind of think through before organizations jump into something like wearable technology um for most there's a significant financial investment as well as time management requirements to manage the data um so again looking at um your health and safety professionals looking at committees is this something you may have time for how often will you be looking at it do you have formal programs uh Senior Management do they have um the financial budgets and commitments set aside for the investment when you're looking at the rollout all that has to be seriously considered um to have success around the wearable technology uh getting back into the conclusions of the research studies um most vendors have case studies now I will caution you that case studies are not research studies case studies are some of the largest clients that have had success and that doesn't translate into the success that you may have for your industry or your organization a lot of vendors uh say if you use the device you could see a 30 reduction claims you'll see a 50 reduction in claims I would be very cautious and careful um as you look at that information and how they achieved those numbers uh because there's not a lot of research around the sensors to determine um how they got that type of reduction you know a few isolated cases or case studies is certainly not a representation of all Industries and every organization um and again uh you know depending on if success maybe a pocket of success us they had you know in those organizations uh again may not represent a true research study that removes the variables like any implementation of new equipment training employee feedback ergonomic committees and support and just focuses on uh the equipment the wearable device itself to determine how much of that is driving improvement or not um and so there's definitely more research and validation that is needed especially around the sensors but again there's a big push on the market right now as many of you probably have seen again at these conferences to give it a try and to Pilot and they're trying to work on the price point to try to make it attractive to start at least get started on on a smaller pilot again these are all conclusions for you to determine whether you think it's a right fit or not the EXO suits again they've been around a little bit longer uh there's no question there's positive results um from these EXO suits um and it can reduce exertion um especially around the overhead work but again um you know adoption you know discomfort adoption of you know having the employees buy into it are definitely a key uh the more you put on uh the full suit the more you start to be concerned about uh Falls balance space that is needed um and unfortunately um and again this is still evolving uh when you take stress off of one part of the body it does typically get transferred to another part and then you have to ask yourself are we creating other issues or concerns or other hazards as a result of that so that has to be monitored um again it's evolving you you know there's more research that definitely needs to happen and occur with the exosuits as well uh just some overall final thoughts and then we can get into questions uh the the biggest I would say the the most important conclusion here really is the financial and the time commitments needed for long-term success um those are critical factors you can't really get around that um again uh it may not be that much in the in the pilot stage um but then when you work towards the full rollout uh it could get a little bit more challenging so being able to address those up front I think are important in terms of whether you're gonna work towards a pilot or not uh developing formal written programs again um those that are successful that have had some success have those formalities in place ergonomic programs um designed uh in embedded into the organization health and safety I'm not talking about just you know policies and procedures um I'm talking about actual programs roles responsibilities how things are going to be managed when things are going to be implemented how that works getting employee feedback all those are important factors um but those that have had some success are ones that tend to have better safety climates safety cultures that understand that get employees to buy in up front very early and share this information with employees in terms of what the thoughts are uh before the pilot stages actually began having their acceptance and buy-in since they're the ones who are going to be utilizing the wearable technology absolutely critical for Success can't stress it enough um very important so if you don't feel like the safety climate is just right or certain departments either with management or employees then this may not be the right fit so it's just something to kind of think through especially as you're you know you typically would pilot this uh maybe with a few departments or one or two departments to start with so those are just things to be aware of um just trying to make sure you understand uh organizations understand um the benefits and and you know and the disadvantages you know the pros and the cons before any final decision you know thinking it through is important and because there is an investment again there is there's Alternatives with the ergonomic applications and this is something that could be very helpful it could be a starting point or a springboard towards looking to move towards a pilot on the wearable technology side whether it be the sensors or the exosuits some prefer to start with the ergonomic applications and that just might seem a better fit uh not just from a financial and time commitment but for what the organization can handle currently I think um we'll keep the remaining time open for uh any questions if you don't have any questions that's fine um if you do think of questions um you know you could still feel free to send them in and we'll address some of these questions in our carrier Chronicles um oh here's some okay let me see if I can get to the questions okay are there any concerns by employees about privacy especially with the tracking applications um I would say for those employees for those organizations where um employees are surveyed absolutely uh privacy is a big factor it seems to be a big factor for employees they seem very very concerned uh about the Privacy especially tracking and how the data is going to be utilized I've only seen one just seeing that one question yeah I'm scrolling I'm not seeing the questions hi Steve can you hear me I can hear you now hi I'll go through a couple of the questions that I got for you because we have several that came in um someone uh we had Tina she asked if you're seeing any lawsuits against wearable tech and if so are there any rulings one way or another that you would want to mention foreign yeah I'm not sure you know that's a tough to answer because every organization in terms of what they want to share I wouldn't say that there's losses or claims as a result I would say it's more focused on organizations are more focused on reducing the existing claims that are currently already in place I wouldn't say that the claims increase I wouldn't say for the most part those organizations that have implemented it are seeing an increase in losses it's more as it's more focused on is there a reduction in the existing losses around Manu Material Handling or repetitive motion and that really varies from every organization it varies depending on uh what they're seeing in the pilot versus the full rollout um it depends on what type of sensor they're using it depends on whether they're using the exosuit uh so that one's a little bit more challenging but I wouldn't say uh that organizations are seen any increase around losses associated with that um we had Benjamin ask if there was any data that construction companies are using wearables and do the wearable stand up to extreme working conditions yeah so this is probably a better question for each of the vendors per se in terms of their products standing up you know in certain you know outdoor um but wearables uh Big Industry construction is really taken off I'm glad you brought that up um the construction industry is really starting to experiment with a lot of the wearables as well uh similar to the case studies that are shared with many of the especially the sensors um wearable sensors uh do show uh that there are some benefits again uh very cautiously here because it is a case study um that the construction industry is receiving some benefits I would say in terms of gathering data up front and utilizing it as more real-time data in terms of changes that they need to make uh with their employees but yes uh I would say uh each of the vendors can probably share their own conclusions around what they're particularly seeing what their product more than we can but I but I would definitely say um you know wearable technology is in very well enmeshed into that industry all right we had one uh from Sharon she was interested in knowing if insurers have begun recognizing the implementation of these programs and recognizing by way of Premium credits yeah I'm not sure insurance carriers are I can't speak for all the insurance carriers out there that most aren't really looking to give any premium credits as a result I think the way that you think of the way the best way to think of wearable technology it's a tool it's just one more resource for uh the health and safety team to manage risk right it may be no different than changing out a piece of equipment or implementing an ergonomic program or a different strategy to help with losses help with claims reduce risk I think that's really the key here um again I don't think you're going to see big changes uh in claim reduction I think the key with wearable technology and we've talked about it on the webinar is getting that real-time data and then what the organization does with that data to implement the changes but again hopefully the key is to reduce risk reduce claims and overall have better outcomes so that in itself can be a plus that premium credits not something I've seen certainly with safety National Steve we had a question from Adam he wanted to know if we have a recommendation of what losses need to be in order to start looking at these yeah I think that that's going to vary from every you know every organization depending on the industry depending on the task but I think if you're looking for a particular lost cause or a lost group manual Material Handling and repetitive motion maybe uh the better drivers to start with if you're seeing an uptick or an increase in the manual Material Handling especially with lifting if you can drill down into your claims this might be a good starting point for you again that's again that's why it seems to be a little bit more focused on the distributions the warehousing where you're going to see a lot of manual Material Handling even though there's a lot that is automated there is still a portion of our part around distribution and warehousing today that still requires some manual tasks okay we have a few more on uh we had one from Carol are there studies evaluating wearable use as a worker rehab Aid presuming Physicians signs off as part of a return to work plan um I don't think the from the wearable technology sensors and the exosuits these vendors that that's what they're promoting probably is kind of best you know this this uh I think question is probably best suited more for the medical community or Physicians to kind of answer from their perspective but I will tell you from the perspective of the vendors out there this is not what they're um marketing uh for organizations um not it's not going to be on the return to work side they're trying to Market more on the prevention side before a claim occurs that's really what they want their organizations but again uh even with that um a lot of it is going to be dependent on what the organizations do with the data right you get the real-time data and what actions you take will then help drive and reduce risk um but that's what they're focused on and again with wearable sensors there there is that focus of trying to change the employee's Behavior which may not be successful in every organization uh as well that are more focused on the prevention side I I would say from the vendor perspective we had a question come from Veronica she want to know if you need ergonomics training background knowledge for using Ergo apps and would it be suitable for use by line supervisors to use yeah great question um the answer is no you don't need to be an ergonomic expert or specialist to use the apps the apps are as simple as uploading the video and uh it comes with instructions and lets you uh Google dashboards and reports that help you understand what that data looks like um so again you don't have to be that ergonomist or that Ergo Champion to fully understand what all those tools mean uh so a lot of the data summarized very quickly for you in terms of high risk low risk and again items that come back higher risk I think you can expect that you may see more claims those that come back lower risk lower risk for claims or injuries to occur and then how fast or quickly you need to make those changes um but yeah great question I think we have time for one more uh we had one coming from Carol she wanted to know if you've heard of any calibration or maintenance issues from deployed wearables uh like earlier extreme conditions yeah you know that's that's another great question um when the wearable sensors first came out and they were focused and again this is from a vendor perspective at least when I spoke with them when they came out and the focus was just on posture monitoring the device itself didn't require a lot of calibration but since it's evolved now and it you could grab a sample of like noise um or it's monitoring for heat or cold um some of the devices again this is changing um calibration does need to be checked periodically how often that's really for the vendors to answer rather than myself but there is um some uh maintenance and calibration that may be required um not 100 sure on the frequency of that but again that's more for the vendors to answer um but they feel confident that those things could be easily resolved and taken care of um that's kind of the support they claim to build in in to help you through that but yeah great question I think this is are we a uber at time uh maybe even slightly over the rest of the questions apologize if we didn't get a chance to go through them we will definitely put them into our carrier Chronicles so please be on the lookout for that we're always adding to our carrier Chronicle articles so you may see a lot of your questions answered during that time thank you so much and again safetynational.com feel free to take a look at the website uh career Chronicles welcome to sign up or go on and you'll see our webinar Library as well and we'll get this posted in about 24 hours for those that want to go onto the website and take a look but for those who have registered you will get a copy of this recording and this entire webinar uh in the next 48 hours thank you very much

2023-08-03 14:07

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