Transforming Ergonomics With Personalized Health And Intelligent Workplaces

138 Pages·2019·5.578 MB·English

by  Mario Vega-Barbas, Fernando Seoane

TRANSFORMING ERGONOMICS WITH
PERSONALIZED HEALTH AND INTELLIGENT
WORKPLACES
Ambient Intelligence and
Smart Environments
The Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments (AISE) book series presents the
latest research results in the theory and practice, analysis and design, implementation,
application and experience of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and Smart Environments
(SmE).
Coordinating Series Editor:
Juan Carlos Augusto

Series Editors:
Emile Aarts, Hamid Aghajan, Michael Berger, Marc Bohlen, Vic Callaghan, Diane Cook,
Sajal Das, Anind Dey, Sylvain Giroux, Pertti Huuskonen, Jadwiga Indulska, Achilles Kameas,
Peter Mikulecký, Andrés Muñoz Ortega, Albert Ali Salah, Daniel Shapiro, Vincent Tam,
Toshiyo Tamura, Michael Weber
Volume 25
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Vol. 15. J. Mintz et al. (Eds.), Touching the Future Technology for Autism? – Lessons from
the HANDS Project
ISSN 1875-4163 (print)
ISSN 1875-4171 (online)
Transforming Ergonomics with
Personalized Health and Intelligent
Workplaces
Edited by
Mario Vega-Barbas
Research Group on Telecommunication and Internet Networks and Services,
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
and
Fernando Seoane
Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology,
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Borås, Sweden
Department of Medical Care Technology, Karolinska University Hospital,
Stockholm, Sweden

Amsterdam • Berlin • Washington, DC
© 2019 The authors and IOS Press.
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ISBN 978-1-61499-972-0 (print)
ISBN 978-1-61499-973-7 (online)
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v
Preface
Life expectancy is increasing, and as a result society includes an ever larger proportion
of older people. Among other things, this is necessitating an increase in the retirement
age in many countries. The fact that more than 95% of the world’s population suffers
from one or more health conditions or disorders [1] makes keeping people healthy and
able to work for longer a difficult challenge. This is a challenge that has existed for
more than two decades, and its consequences, such as increasing costs, a shortage of
healthcare personnel, and more complex combinations of chronic diseases, have be-
come particularly apparent in recent years. In addition, hazards at work and unhealthy
work practices are often the underlying cause of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) and
depression due to burnout. All of these factors make it difficult to sustain the current
social system.
To facilitate a longer working life for the general population, a balance must be
found between the demands of work and human capabilities. This is in line with sug-
gested approaches for chronic disease management to reduce the healthcare burden.
The most common approach to minimising risks, reducing exposure and avoiding a
harmful working lifestyle is prevention by design, i.e. designing the work environment
for the healthy and safe execution of the tasks to be performed. Ergonomists already
assess MSD risk factors and suggest changes to workplaces, however, existing methods
are mainly based on visual observation, which is relatively unreliable and can only
cover part of the working day. Furthermore, suggestions generally concern the work-
place and the organization of work overall, but rarely include the working techniques of
individuals. In this context, the use of pervasive technology, ubiquitous computing and
p-health monitoring provide a key toolset to transform many common working scenari-
os into healthy, intelligent workplaces.
Emerging technologies, such as smart textiles and micro-electronics integrated into
wearable devices, have enabled the development of intelligent biomedical clothing, and
the recent proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) systems have facilitated the integra-
tion of pervasive sensitive services into the environment. These, together with ambient
intelligence (AmI) technology techniques and big data analytics, have fostered a prolif-
eration of p-Health monitoring solutions. This, together with advances in the develop-
ment of inertial measurement units, activity and heart-rate-sensing watches and gar-
ments and their wide presence in the consumer electronics market, have opened a new
arena for monitoring the physical workload and posture of different limbs. These wear-
able and IoT technologies, combined with ergonomic assessments, facilitate the gather-
ing of epidemiological data for further big data analysis, and even provide the oppor-
tunity for prompt feedback and for coaching through deployment of the appropriate
personalized m-healthcare tools.
Transformation of a work environment into a careful – even healthy – intelligent
workplace as a deployment platform for p-Health services may support not just ergon-
omists, employees and employers, but also society in general; enabling the workplace
as an intelligent environment might be the solution to ensuring the sustainability of
current social welfare systems.
vi
However, the inclusion of these emerging technologies and analysis techniques
create other challenges that up to now have not been part of the field or context of er-
gonomics and the design of workspaces. As regards pervasive sensitive services, the
interoperability of data and its security become essential to guarantee adoption and
final acceptance, and it is therefore necessary to ensure that the systems developed
conform to existing data protection laws and standards, i.e. General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
This book presents a collection of the most significant challenges and advances in
the field of intelligent workspaces and personalized ergonomics, bringing together the
most relevant results obtained after the completion of various international research
projects. The book is organized into three main sections, each corresponding to a point
of view covered by the projects carried out. The first section, Personalized Ergonomics,
offers a vision about the need for practical and reliable risk assessment methods for the
prevention of MSD and the enhancement of the workplace through the use of compre-
hensive stepped-care models for mental health. The section Pervasive Technology for
Intelligent Workplaces identifies the opportunities and challenges of technology-based
interventions to increase health-awareness and the security and privacy issues which
must be covered in the smart workplace. The third section presents Data Warehouse
Governance and Analytics related works. The book concludes with a chapter on lessons
learnt.

Reference

[1] Vos, T., Barber, R. M., Bell, B., Bertozzi-Villa, A., Biryukov, S., Bolliger, I., ... &
Duan, L. (2015). Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived
with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990–
2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lan-
cet, 386(9995), 743–800.
vii
About the Editors
Assist. Prof. Mario Vega-Barbas is a senior data scientist within the Research Group on
Telecommunication and Internet Network and Services at Universidad Politécnica de
Madrid. This research work is focused on sensitive and pervasive services, user-
centered security, intelligent environments applied to eHealth systems and complex-
data visualization. Assist. Prof. Vega-Barbas holds a Ph.D. in Systems and Services
Engineering for the Information Society from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid,
Spain, and also a Ph.D. in Applied Medical Technology from KTH-Royal Institutet of
Technology, Sweden. In addition, he has collaborated with various European and
American institutions, such as Karolinska Institutet, KTH-Royal Institute of Technolo-
gy, IEEE or the National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research
(CONICYT) of Chile in research projects and the review of proposals as an expert in
the field of smart spaces applied to telemedicine, Internet of Things or Ambient Assist-
ing Living.
Prof. Fernando Seoane, Docent in Biomedical Engineering Systems at the KTH-
Royal Institute of Technology since 2012, received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in Bi-
omedical Engineering from Chalmers Tekniska Högkolan, and Linköpings Universitet,
and his B.Eng. in Electronics Systems from Universidad de Alcala. Prof. Seoane is
currently managing the Research, Innovation, Development and Education activities at
the department of Medical Care Technologies at the Karolinska University Hospital
and is a Senior Lecturer at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm Sweden, he is a full profes-
sor in biomedical engineering at the University of Borås, where he leads the research
group in Textile and Wearable Electronics for p-Health Solutions. Prof. Seoane also
conducts needs-driven translational research into wearable measurement Instrumenta-
tion and Digital Health Transformation aiming to enable innovations in medical and
clinical practice, focusing on p-health solutions including wearable measurement sys-
tems, biosignals processing of non-invasive physiological measurements and biomedi-
cal data analysis for healthcare management improvement. Prof. Seoane has successful-
ly supervised 10 PhD students and participated in more than 30 externally-funded re-
search and education projects, acting as principal investigator, project manager or
work-package leader on more than half of them. Finally, Prof. Seoane is an IEEE Sen-
ior member, member of the IEEE-EMBS Technical Committee in Wearable Biomedi-
cal Measurement Systems as well as a member of the steering committee of both the
Stockholm Medical Imaging Laboratory and Education core facility and the Process-
Oriented Data Science for Healthcare Alliance.
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