1. How can your webcam improve your health?
Dept. of Social Work:
Prof. Julie Cwikel
Information System Dept.:
Dr. Meirav Taieb-Maimon
Prof. Bracha Shapira
Mr. Ido Orenstein
Mr. Dudi Ben Shimon
Mr. Denis Klimov

2. Do you recognize yourself?

3. Work station characteristics:
Long work hours
Lighting
Fatigue
Visual overload
Arm position
Eating at the computer
Un-natural sitting position

4. Goals of the research:
To test the effectiveness over time of an innovative self-modeling photo-training method for reducing musculoskeletal risk among workers at computers.
This was compared to traditional one-time ergonomic training (pamphlets, personal advice and workstation adjustments).

5. Method for Ergonomic Estimate of Posture
RAPID UPPER LIMB ASSESSMENT (RULA)
Scale from 1-7 (1 good posture – 7 poor posture)
RULA takes into account a series of angles and deviations
Additional aspects

6. Description of the Experiment
60 workers (51 from BGU and 9 from Soroka Hospital) working in different jobs (e.g. administration, research, programmers)
Age range 26-66
38 Women and 22 Men
At each participant’s work station a webcam was installed that photographed at random intervals approximately each 20 mins.
10-15 photos were analyzed each day
Three study groups:
Photo-training with personalized pop-up photos (intervention)
Traditional office training
Control

7. Pop-up personalized photo-training photos

8. Stages of the experiment
Baseline
Control
Traditional office training
Photo-training
Intervention
Control
Traditional office training
Photo-training (pop up remainder)
Follow Up
Control
Traditional office training
Photo-training
Training
One week break

9. Traditional office training
Overall Results
קבוצת
Control
Traditional office training
Photo-training

10. Comparison between men and women
Control
Traditional office training
Photo-training

11. Conclusions
Personal pop-ups are an effective of reminding computer users to pay attention to their work posture and may over time, improve worker health.