Mauka-Mauka : Measuring and Predicting Opportunities for Webcam-based Heart Rate Sensing in Workplace Environment

Abstract

Prolonged sitting and physical inactivity at workplace often lead to various health risks such as diabetes, heart attack, cancer etc. Many organizations are investing in wellness programs to ensure the well-being of their employees. Generally wearable devices are used in such wellness programs to detect health problems of employees, but studies have shown that wearables do not result in sustained adoption. Heart rate measurement has emerged as an effective tool to detect various ailments such as anxiety, stress, cardiovascular diseases etc. There are pre-existing techniques that use webcam feed to sense heart rate subject to some experimental constraints like stillness of face, light illumination etc. In this paper, we show that in-situ opportunities can be found and predicted for webcam based heart rate sensing in the workplace environment by analyzing data from unobtrusive sensors in a pervasive manner.

Tapping into the wearable device revolution in the work environment: a systematic review

“…The SLR revealed that several COTS and PoC (see Table I) wearable categories, such as smartwatches (Kritzler et al, 2015;Yang and Shen, 2015), digital pedometers (Nikayin et al, 2014;Singh et al, 2015;Glance et al, 2016), smart clothing (Pioggia et al, 2009;Yang and Shen, 2015) and HMDs (Chen and Kamara, 2011;Nee et al, 2012) that are used for entertainment or lifestyle purposes can also be used beneficially in the work environment. However, it may not always be possible to use COTS devices in work environments due to the context of the work and potential technological challenges.…”

“…Studies show that simpler devices such as digital pedometers (Singh et al, 2015;Glance et al, 2016) and smartwatches (Kritzler et al, 2015;Yang and Shen, 2015) help employers obtain minimal data from tracking the activities of their workers, whereas advanced technologies such as EEG devices (Dubinsky et al, 2014;Durkin and Lokshina, 2015) and EMG sensor nodes (Nadeem et al, 2015), help employers compute a many-devices index (SI) score through employee assessment (Peppoloni et al, 2014), allowing them to create and deploy effective physical well-being strategies. Some wearable devices, such as HMDs (Chen and Kamara, 2011;Nee et al, 2012;Kenn and Bürgy, 2014), EEG devices (Dubinsky et al, 2014;Durkin and Lokshina, 2015) and digital pedometers (Singh et al, 2015;Glance et al, 2016)…”

“…Wearable technology can be a valuable tool in the workplace to monitor and refine wellness initiatives. Many devices are used for monitoring physio-social stress, such as stress in the work environment (Setz et al, 2010;Milosevic et al, 2012;Muaremi et al, 2013;Shirouzu et al, 2015;Lavallière et al, 2016); physical stress, such as stress caused to the body by contact with heavy equipment (Luo and Yu, 2013;Chu et al, 2014;Peppoloni et al, 2014); or tracking the physical activities of workers (Singh et al, 2015;Glance et al, 2016;Zenonos et al, 2016). A significant benefit of wearable technology involves actively monitoring employees and having access to the data collected by those devices (Kritzler et al, 2015).…”

“…A significant benefit of wearable technology involves actively monitoring employees and having access to the data collected by those devices (Kritzler et al, 2015). With the collected data, employers can understand the general feeling of the work environment at any given time without explicitly asking any employees (Zenonos et al, 2016); encourage employees to be more active in their day-to-day life by generating personalised recommendations/prescriptions, utilising gamification or encouraging various well-being incentive programmes (Singh et al, 2015); and predict the health issues of employees and take active steps toward assisting them via specialised prevention programmes (Nikayin et al, 2014).…”

Emerging Technologies at Work: Policy Ideas to Address Negative Consequences for Work, Workers, and Society

“…Surveillance takes on a personal and even more intrusive tone in the case of wearable technologies that monitor workers’ health and safety through sensors that collect physiological and psychological data. Companies may employ digital health technologies to promote healthy behaviors via interventions or gamification (e.g., motivating employees to walk 10,000 steps daily; see Singh et al 2015) or to assess workers’ mood (e.g., happiness, boredom, sadness, or anger; see Zenonos et al 2016). Detractors view these technologies as emblematic of “corporeal capitalism” (Moore 2015: 8) and contend they raise significant privacy and social justice issues, including hiring and firing discrimination based on employers’ access to medical information (Nikayin, Heikkilä, De Reuver, and Solaimani 2014).…”