Musculoskeletal Health Program: Webinars
Webinars
The Musculoskeletal Heath Program conducts a series of webinars. Previous webinars are archived below. Contact Jack Lu (Mlu@cdc.gov) to learn more about upcoming events.
Toyota Motor North America is invested in exploring emerging technologies to enhance safety, particularly to reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders. These technologies include exoskeletons to reduce fatigue in different parts of the body, such as shoulder and hand, as well as wearable sensors to automate and enhance risk assessments. Virtual reality is also being explored to improve all aspects of training, including ergonomics. This presentation shares key highlights of these trials and implementations, as well as top challenges and successes. The speaker Marisol Barrero manages the development and integration of safety-related technology across manufacturing operations. Externally she serves on the Boards of the Automotive Exoskeleton Group (AExG), sponsored via the Wearable Robotics Association, as well as the newly established ASTM Exoskeleton Center of Excellence.
This webinar gives an overview of collaborated work on developing lightweight and nonrestrictive wearable robot technologies for augmenting and restoring human performance. The performance of the technologies is characterized through biomechanical and physiological studies so as to further the scientific understanding of how humans interact with such wearable devices. The research work is conducted by a multidisciplinary team of students and research staff with backgrounds in engineering, materials science, apparel design, industrial design, biomechanics, and physical therapy, in addition to valuable collaborations with colleagues from Harvard, Boston University, and beyond. The long-term vision is for ubiquitous soft wearable robots that can be worn all day, every day, in the community, clinic, and workplace. The speaker Dr. Conor Walsh is the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an Associate Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He is the founder of the Harvard Biodesign Lab.
The presentation provides an overview of the ASTM Exo Technology Center of Excellence (ET CoE) and its current activities to accelerate research to standards. The ET CoE is engaging in four main areas: Research to Standards, Education/Workforce Development and Training, Standards, and Certification. In this presentation, planned and ongoing efforts in these areas are discussed, including a brief overview of ASTM Committee F48 on Exoskeletons and Exosuits and its linkages to the ET CoE. Dr. William “Bill” Billotte is the Director of Global Exo Technology Programs and the Executive Director of the ASTM Exo Technology Center of Excellence with ASTM International.
Musculoskeletal symptoms and injuries have adverse impacts on worker health and performance in surgical environments. Though the ergonomic risks in surgery are well-recognized, the mitigation of these risk factors is especially difficult in surgery due to the demanding work and restrictive work environment (e.g., sterility) that must prioritize patient safety. This webinar presents 1) ergonomics in the operating room and 2) facilitators and barriers to exoskeleton technology for surgical team members. The first speaker is Dr. Dimitrios Stefanidis, a professor of surgery and Chief of minimally invasive and bariatric surgery in the department of surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine. The second speaker is Dr. Denny Yu, an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Exoskeleton technology is beginning to inch its way forward into the industrial workforce as noted in recent media releases from automotive and aerospace manufacturing companies. Boeing has been evaluating the efficacy of industrial exoskeleton technology since 2012 for its factory workers in production and maintenance. In order for the company to have continuously performed such endeavors however, subject matter experts needed to prove to leadership and end users that this potential worker enhancement technology was worth the Return on Investment (ROI). The speaker Dr. Christopher Reid highlights different ROI approaches that Boeing has learned over the last seven years of discovery through the “crawl, walk, run, fly” analogy. Dr. Christopher Reid is a Human Factors & Ergonomics Associate Technical Fellow for Boeing’s Environment Health & Safety (EHS) Organization in Charleston. He is the president for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society; and the chair of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Subcommittee for the ASTM F48 standard on Exoskeletons/Exosuits.
Ergonomics improves employee well-being, and leads to reductions in causal absenteeism, first-aid cases, modified duty cases, recordable injuries, lost-time cases, and workers’ compensation costs, among others. However, other business stakeholders, such as plant leadership, quality, operations, manufacturing, boards of directors, and investors, generally have a limited awareness or understanding of the value of ergonomics. They often overlook and underappreciate that ergonomics can improve business performance. This includes improving product quality, manufacturing performance, employee engagement, and even improving stock performance and corporate social responsibility. The speaker Mr. Blake McGowan presents how to communicate the value of an ergonomics process to different business stakeholders and to generate additional support for your ergonomics efforts. Mr. Blake McGowan is the Director of Ergonomic Research at VelocityEHS company. He oversees large-scale ergonomics initiatives that help organizations build internal ergonomics expertise using software solutions.
Current field ergonomic risk assessments are based on observational methods. These methods are time-consuming, labor intensive and error prone because they often require subjective judgements for interpreting risk factors. To address these issues, the presenter Dr. SangHyun Lee has developed a smartphone-based automated risk assessment system, which only requires video images of workers taken by ordinary digital video recording devices such as smartphones without any sensor/marker/suit attached. The goal of the system is to expedite the current ergonomic risk assessment process by automating quantifications of posture information.