High-Tech Safety: Wearable Technology

You probably have a smartphone already, and your tablet, your television, and your car may be almost as smart. But what if you had a smart hard hat, smart safety shoes, and a smart high-visibility vest? You could increase your safety IQ just by getting dressed!

In all seriousness, wearable technology is coming soon to a workplace near you—and when it arrives, it will enhance productivity and safety.

Smart Hard Hats

Can your workers’ hard hats let you know when they’ve been left in the dashboard of the work truck? Smart hard hats can. They can also report impacts and falls, and let you track workers’ movements in ways that will enable you to improve the organization of work.

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Join us on Tuesday, August 4, for our in-depth webinar, Safety Culture Shape-Up: How to Quantify and Boost Employee Engagement

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Smart Vests

To monitor workers for early signs of heat illness, you’re probably dependent on maddeningly nonspecific symptoms like irritability, headaches, and self-reported feelings of being overheated. But what if workers had smart vests that could transmit temperature readings, heart rate, and blood pressure in real time? It’s coming. Slightly further out, but in the works, are vests and other wearables that can monitor for hazardous airborne contaminants—warning workers when, for example, carbon monoxide levels are high—and wearables that can identify repetitive motions that could lead to ergonomic injury.

Tracking Devices and Personal Alarms

For remote workers, or field workers who are at high risk of assault—a category that includes workers from taxi drivers to home health workers—being able to keep track of the worker, and receiving quick notifications when there is a problem could literally be lifesavers. Personal alarms that are unobtrusive—incorporated into attractive jewelry, for example—and linked directly to law enforcement and other aid are dropping rapidly in price, while improving rapidly in functionality.

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Your safety culture determines your safety success, and many safety managers learn this the hard way. A poor safety culture is something that can undo even the best efforts and safety programs. Click here to learn more!

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Health Monitoring Systems

Basketball players in the NBA’s D-league (development league) wear small devices that connect their health statistics in real time, enabling players to analyze and improve their fitness and endurance. Olympic athletes have used similar systems. In your workforce,  devices that track health status could be used to monitor employees with chronic conditions, or workers at risk of conditions that begin with mild physical distress (for example, workers in a confined space who might first show symptoms of exposure to a hazardous atmosphere with increased respiration and pulse). Real-time monitoring of workers’ health could make it easier to protect them in dangerous situations.

Wearable safety devices are part of an emerging trend toward an “Internet of things”—more on that tomorrow!