scholarly journals The Role of Electrocardiography in Occupational Medicine, from Einthoven’s Invention to the Digital Era of Wearable Devices

Author(s):  
Antonio Baldassarre ◽  
Nicola Mucci ◽  
Martina Padovan ◽  
Alessia Pellitteri ◽  
Silvia Viscera ◽  
...  

Clinical-instrumental investigations, such as electrocardiography (ECG), represent a corollary of a procedures that, nowadays, is called upon as part of the principles of precision medicine. However when carrying out the professional routine examinations, most tend to ignore how a “simple” instrument can offer indispensable support in clinical practice, even in occupational medicine. The advent of the digital age, made of silicon and printed circuit boards, has allowed the miniaturization of the electronic components of these electro-medical devices. Finally, the adoption of patient wearables in medicine has been rapidly expanding worldwide for a number of years. This has been driven mainly by consumers’ demand to monitor their own health. With the ongoing research and development of new features capable of assessing and transmitting real-time biometric data, the impact of wearables on cardiovascular management has become inevitable. Despite the potential offered by this technology, as evident from the scientific literature, the application of these devices in the field of health and safety in the workplace is still limited. This may also be due to the lack of targeted scientific research. While offering great potential, it is very important to consider and evaluate ethical aspects related to the use of these smart devices, such as the management of the collected data relating to the physiological parameters and the location of the worker. This technology is to be considered as being aimed at monitoring the subject’s physiological parameters, and not at the diagnosis of any pathological condition, which should always be on charge of the medical specialist We conducted a review of the evolution of the role that electrophysiology plays as part of occupational health and safety management and on its possible future use, thanks to ongoing technological innovation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 172
Author(s):  
Gilbert Joshua Atteh Sewu ◽  
Emmanuel Gyabeng ◽  
Adelaide Angela Dadzie ◽  
Nana Kwame Nkrumah

A survey was conducted to investigate the impact of occupational health and safety measures (OHSMs) on the performance of Banks in Ghana. Questionnaires were administered to employees of various Banks in the country. Using a Likert scale, respondents were asked to assess the impact of OHSMs on the performance of their Banks. The reliability of the survey data collected was tested using Cronbach’s alpha. Subsequently, Pearson correlation and simple regression were used to understand the statistical relationships between variables in terms of the magnitude and the direction (positive or negative) and to determine the degree of variance among dependent and independent variables. Findings suggest that there was a slightly moderate positive correlation between OHSMs and performance of Banks. Although employees generally agreed that OHSMs were in practice, the measures should be improved and government should reinforce policies for the implementation of OHSMs and ensure compliance by the Banks.


2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Giretti ◽  
Alessandro Carbonari ◽  
Berardo Naticchia ◽  
Mario De Grassi

This paper reports a feasibility study which addressed the development of a new, advanced system mainly devoted to automatic real‐time health and safety management on construction sites. The preliminary analyses and experiments described in this paper concern two of the most important functionalities which must be included in the system's final release. The first functionality consists in real‐time position‐tracking of workers involved on construction sites and the second ‐ in a software tool for the prevention of non‐authorized access to dangerous zones. This research step is part of a vaster, ongoing research project, addressing the development of a new generation of advanced construction management systems which allow real‐time monitoring and coordination of tasks, automatic health and safety management, on‐site delivery of technical information and the capture of “as‐built” documentation. This paper focuses mainly on the development of a reliable methodology for real‐time monitoring of the position of both workers and equipment in outdoor construction sites by applying Ultra Wide Band (UWB) based technologies. This positioning system was then interfaced with a software tool which performs virtual fencing of pre‐selected, dangerous areas. Guidelines for the design of the receivers’ topology will be addressed and the results of measurements recorded on a typical medium‐sized block of flats, during different phases of the construction progress will be summed up. Finally, the preliminary experimental results obtained by the virtual fencing application tool will be presented and used to plan future research objectives. Santrauka Straipsnyje aptartos naujos automatinės darbo ir saugos valdymo sistemos statybos aikštelėje kūrimo galimybės. Aprašytos preliminarios analizės ir eksperimentai – du pagrindiniai veiksniai, kurie turi būti įtraukti į galutinį sistemos variantą. Pirmasis veiksnys susijęs su statybos aikštelės darbininkų padėties realiu laiku nustatymu. Kompiuterine programa ribojamas jų patekimas į pavojingas neleistinas zonas. Šie tyrimai yra didelio besitęsiančio projekto dalis. Projektas susijęs su naujos kartos statybos valdymo sistemos kūrimu. Sistema leis kontroliuoti statybos eigą realiu laiku, užtikrinti automatinį darbų saugos valdymą, techninės informacijos ir dokumentacijos gavimą. Straipsnyje pagrindinis dėmesys sukoncentruotas į patikimos metodikos kūrimą. Taikant šią metodiką ir ultraplačiajuosčio bevielio ryšio (angl. Ultra Wide Band (UWB)) technologiją, galima bus nustatyti darbininkų ir įrangos padėtį atvirose statybos aikštelėse realiu laiku. Ši nustatymo sistema per grafinę terpę yra sujungta su programine įranga, kuri sukuria virtualų aptvarą iš anksto nurodytoms pavojingoms zonoms. Pateiktos imtuvo topologijos projektavimo rekomendacijos. Įvertinti tipinių vidutinio dydžio butų blokų užfiksuotų matavimų rezultatai skirtingais statybos etapais. Pateikti preliminarūs eksperimentiniai rezultatai, gauti įvedus virtualaus aptvėrimo koncepciją. Šie rezultatai bus panaudoti planuojant būsimų tyrimų tikslus.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 195-201
Author(s):  
Marta Niciejewska ◽  
Olga Kiriliuk

AbstractThe article presents the element of occupational health and safety management in enterprises, with particular emphasis on the identification of occupational hazards. The factors that may be a source of occupational hazards have been classified and divided. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of occupational hazards on work safety in the opinion of employees of micro and small enterprises. The research was carried out using the proprietary questionnaire. The results were verified by means of a direct interview with elements of observation. The research was compared with the trends prevailing in the enterprises of the European Union countries according to the results of the research conducted by EU-OSHA. Polish respondents considered physical and psychophysical factors to be the main occupational hazards. The results turned out to be very similar to those presented by EU-OSHA in its publicly available reports. The basic principle of occupational health and safety management, i.e. identification of occupational hazards, is reliability and correctness. Identification of occupational hazards gives the opportunity to take correct and effective corrective and preventive actions reducing occupational risk, for example through the effective use of personal protective equipment, or a more detailed treatment of both introductory and instructional training. The article also highlights the migration of individual occupational hazards, which depends on many factors, both professional and non-professional.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 4790-4796

The purpose of the research is to present a statistical approach using latent and manifest variables applied to measure the occupational health and safety performance of a worldwide enterprise (energy sector) located in Casablanca, Kingdom of Morocco. The principal idea is to measure the impact of occupational health and safety practices OHS (which are divided into seven segments: Leadership and worker participation, Planning, Support, Operation, Improvement, Performance evaluation and Organizational context) on the OHS performance (which is divided into two perspectives: (Workers Results perspectives and Finance Results perspectives), enabling the company to characterize her performance regarding to the ISO 45001 standard's. To do this, we use the SEM’s resolution based on the Partial Least squares (PLS) method via the XL-STAT software on a sample of 139 questionnaires administered face-to-face with managers, technicians, engineers and directors of this company. The obtained results could be examined in order to analyze the occupational health and safety management system performance, in order to reveal the challenges faced by company to maintain the ISO 45001 and to make suggestion to improve operational health and safety process, plan the improvements and develop an action plan.


Author(s):  
Raúl Payá Castiblanque

The aim of this research was to study the impact of the unitary prevention delegates (UPDs) on the Spanish working environment. To this end, a cross-sectional study was carried out using microdata from the National Survey on Health and Safety Management in Companies (ENGE-2009) with a sample of 5147 work centres. To measure the relationship between the presence of UPD in workplaces with preventive management indicators and damage to health, individual and multiple logistic regression models were carried out, calculating the crude (cOR) and adjusted (aOR) odds ratios by sociodemographic covariates, with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Ambivalent results were obtained. On the one hand, a positive impact of the UPDs was found, in the management of prevention showing a higher probability of prevention plans being carried out (aOR = 3.97; 95% CI: 3.26–4.83), risk assessments (aOR = 5.96; 95% CI: 4.44–8.01) and preventive actions were planned (aOR = 3.01; 95% CI: 2.55–3.56), as well as 1.56 times less likely to register minor occupational accidents (aOR = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.53–0.76). On the other hand, the presence of the UPDs did not promote the activation of a participatory culture and did not reduce the probability of suffering serious and fatal accidents at work. In conclusion, UPDs need to activate workers’ participation to improve results.


Safety ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily J. Haas ◽  
Brianna Eiter ◽  
Cassandra Hoebbel ◽  
Margaret E. Ryan

A debate exists about the impact of mineworker experience on health and safety (H&S). Studies often assert that length of time on the job (tenure) is negatively associated with accidents (i.e., new employees have a higher accident rate). However, inferences are all made based on reported incidents, whereas we know that underreporting is a problem in high-risk occupations. To that end, this study sought to examine how worker experience may impact a variety of H&S outcomes on the job. Comprised of three separate case studies with different H&S outcome variables, researchers broke down the results of several data sets that were collected from 3400 miners who worked in either underground coal, surface sand, stone, and gravel, or metal/non-metal to reveal any underlying trends among differing levels of experience on a specific job, with a specific company, and in the mining industry. Each case study is described in turn, using Kruskall-Wallis tests to determine the impact miners’ experience on hazard recognition accuracy (Case 1), self-escape confidence (Case 2), and safety compliance (Case 3). The results show that workers with more job experience possess higher levels of perceived health and safety skills, including the identification of hazards on the job. We discuss the impact of experience on several predictors of incidents, including perceived job knowledge and hazard identification, and perceived compliance on the job. Practitioners can expect to gain a greater understanding of their workforce, including actual differences and similarities to consider, when communicating pieces of their health and safety management system to training workers of all experience levels.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjan Bilban

The European Society for Occupational Medicine notes that numerous differences exist between EU members regarding their policies associated with occupational health and safety; one of the reasons for this is the historical variety of approaches. If we wish to unify our occupational health and safety systems, we thus need a common, unified policy and a common European training programme. The key challenges that European occupational medicine will be facing in the future are as follows: globalization, presentism, aging of the workforce, inter-generational cooperation, stress and workplace- related burnout (mental disorders), musculoskeletal diseases (especially various types of dorsalgia), occupational injuries, work following a prolonged absence from the workplace, occupational disability, occupational rehabilitation, the impact of work on the private life and vice-versa, outsourcing, self-employment, precarious employment, prolongation of working life, encouragement of healthy living after retirement, etc. The European Society for Occupational Medicine thus proposes that the new common strategy include a list of priorities and objectives with timelines and that it anticipate collaboration between all stakeholders (workers, employers, experts and the government), while occupational medicine practitioners must become the workers’ (impartial) advisers regarding workplace risks (total professional impartiality). Key words: occupational medicine, development, outlook, key challenges


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