“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” ― Herman Melville
Even back in the 19th century Melville understood that we are all connected and that our actions and responsibilities affect those around us. We hear today of the connected work, the Internet of Things, the dominance of the smart phone and smart watch…the world has become a globally connected village with 24/7 operation, 365 days a year. How do we make sure that this technological advancement can benefit the health of the worker, and in the words of Melville, how can our actions today have an effect on our fellow man?
Today the risk of exposure within the workplace is predominantly managed by occupational hygienists, a health and safety manager or someone who ‘can use technical monitoring equipment’! They take measurements, garner understanding of the process that the workers are involved in and ultimately look to reduce the exposure in the workplace of both physical (noise) and chemical (dusts, vapours, solvents) agents. This could perhaps be a single person looking after hundreds of workers’ health, if not thousands. If their desire is to look after and monitor every individual, then this single person is putting their own health at risk with the limitations of the time available!
The 21st century has given us the potential to connect seamlessly with anyone in the world, yet this is not truly scalable in all aspects of the workplace. The protection of workers and the reduction of their exposure to risk is still implemented with technology developed decades ago. If we can track our steps, sleep pattern, position on the earth’s surface, heart rate and, as a lone worker, whether I am ‘man down’, then why not take it a step further.
The need to treat health like safety is one that we should all be committed to; the possibility to have every individual in the workplace acting as a real-time smart sensor, capturing quantitative data gives us all the potential to act as occupational hygienists throughout the day. To begin the mapping processes of areas of concerns or potential risks to health is not the dream of yesterday but the possibility of today.
As IBM stated in ‘Tapping into the Information Seeker’ back in 2011: “To date, health device makers have primarily targeted consumers who are either fitness focused or chronically ill. But between these two extremes sits a large, fragmented and often overlooked population who seek better information to effectively manage their health.
“Recent advances in technology are enabling smarter, connected personal healthcare ‘systems’ that can supply crucial information to significantly improve diagnosis, treatment and condition management. These developments now make it feasible to deliver health device solutions that meet the needs of these ‘Information Seekers’ and help reduce long-term healthcare costs”.
By moving the ‘information Seeker’ into the workplace, we can begin to look at the long term effects of exposure to chemical and physical agents. Every one of us could become armed with insights on which to modify their own individual behaviours and in effect become a virtual occupational hygienist. As well as regular monitoring programs based on the legislation today, this can be backed up with trend data monitored in real-time on a daily basis, akin to ‘Citizen Science’, an idea proposed by Professor John Cherrie in his Keynote speech at one of the recent BOHS annual conferences.
Casella has started on the path of remote monitoring of the worker with Bluetooth enabled devices for noise and dust. This makes data more readily available, real-time decisions can be made and workers are not disrupted allowing productivity to be maintained.
Those fibres that Melville spoke of that connect us may also be the ones that are harming us. Treating health like safety and monitoring everyone, all of the time by utilising the leaps in technology will allow us to understand quickly what needs to change to reduce that exposure. Let us take action and in 30 years time see the effects of a healthier workforce.
