Improving outcomes by combining complex human interactions with injury prevention technology

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Every day it seems new injury management and injury prevention technology enters the occupational health and safety market in an attempt to modernize and simplify the hazard mitigation process. Everything from sensors and sensor-less technology to new forms of software frequently make their way into the space and speak to the impact they can make for organizations and their employees.

But all this innovation and disruption can make it extremely difficult to keep up with the latest in industry technology and can make it even harder to understand how it can truly prevent injuries within your organization. This is because technology on its own is only part of the solution. To maximize its impact, it needs to be effectively paired with onsite human interaction.

Here’s how injury prevention technology and complex human interactions can work together to help uncover the what, why, and how of injury prevention.

The “What” – Injury Prevention Technology

When we say injury prevention technology addresses the “what” of the equation, we’re speaking to the fact that it serves to identify some of the risk factors present in the workplace, in terms of time spent, the number of repetitions, the frequency of movements, and so on, but does not identify risk factors related to forces, vibration, and contact stress.

It doesn’t however, identify why these risk factors are present in the first place – which is critical in planning against them. Injury prevention technology on its own also doesn’t formulate a plan for how to mitigate or eliminate these risk factors.

Another key limitation of this technology is that it only captures a snapshot of a given day – not the holistic picture of the working environment that can help us make decisions for the long-term.

Adding Complex Human Interactions

The best way to improve on these limitations is to add complex human interactions to the equation.

Every employee has their own unique story and background that even the most advanced technology cannot fully uncover, including aspects that are:

  • Physical (e.g. pre-existing health conditions)
  • Mental/Cognitive (e.g. ability to critically think or problem/solve)
  • Psychological (e.g. personal issues and stresses)

Because of this, what may be perceived as a risk factor for one person may not be a factor at all to another, simply because of individual human variation. Humans are by nature perfectly imperfect, which makes standardization and injury prevention through sole reliance on technology an unrealistic expectation.

The solution is to utilize both injury prevention technology and complex human interactions such that they effectively complement one another to the greatest of their ability.

Combining Technology and Human Interaction

While technology provides the “what” of the situation by identifying some of the risk factors (postures, repetitions, time spent in postures), human interactions can work to identify the remaining risk factors (forces, vibration, contact stress),   why they’re present, and how we can best go about eliminating them.

Here’s an example of a scenario in which complex human interactions and injury prevention technology can work together to fully complement one another.

  1. Say a person is collecting data for multiple job processes while on site. This data consists of the weights, forces, and reach distances of a given job, and is supported by high-quality photos and videos that help to tell the story. This process also includes interviews of the human operators in the job to achieve a deep dive into uncovering why risks are present and how they can be eliminated.
  2. Once data is collected and interviews have been conducted, the person then enters all the information into a software platform that uses an algorithm to prioritize the risks within each process and to compare them against other job processes. The platform then auto-populates a concise, easy-to-understand, and actionable report that can be shared and accessed via the cloud by any team member who needs it.

By utilizing the combined strengths of human interaction and technology to make up for the weaknesses in both areas, we are able to achieve a more efficient and effective way of turning basic, unstructured data into an actionable resource for the whole organization.

Make the most of injury prevention technology with Fit For Work

This is what Fit For Work achieves by combining our onsite Early Intervention with innovative technology that includes our Fit For Work PREDICTS™ platform – the only predictive analytics platform in the industry.

We understand that AI can find patterns that humans can’t, but we also know humans can provide personalized attention that AI can’t. In combining this data-driven method with both onsite and virtual human interaction, we are reshaping the way employers achieve a safe and productive environment for their workers.

Contact us today to experience the true difference of injury prevention technology.

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