In Occupational Health & Safety, Innovation Is Key – Can AI Help?
The face of occupational health and safety has changed significantly in the USA since the coronavirus pandemic. Boundaries between work and home are blurred, what constitutes sickness is under question, and the responsibility of employer v employee is becoming more strained. With all of this in mind, the American Society of Safety Professionals has made a call for innovation and the need for novel approaches to OHS. To best understand why so much is needed to innovate in OHS, and how AI may be able to help, it’s important to understand the current situation and risks.
Injury on the job
Injuries and deaths on the job are rising in the USA. According to USA Today, the most recent studies show that 5,300 people die at work every year. Some professions with natural risk, such as tree surgeons and private commercial pilots, are highly represented in the figures; but so are supervisors in agriculture, personal service managers, and decorators. Not all of these deaths are due to employee mismanagement, but a significant number are, resulting in a successful wrongful death lawsuit once legal professionals have got to the bottom of the incident. This is a clear legal risk for businesses, albeit a fair one. These rising statistics are at a time when enforcement by OSHA has been reduced; there is an overall lower rate of compliance that has to be considered. As such, this is a key risk that businesses must address.
AI enhanced enforcement
Artificial intelligence is already being used by the federal administration to help reverse these figures. According to the Department of Labor, a technology called HoloLens is being used to assess safety in key areas of risk, such as construction trenches. This innovative and high tech device combines data sets with an actual visual aid and is there to outline exactly where and how faults might occur within the workspace. This really meets the idea of AI as being high tech, innovative, and there to successfully preempt issues. However, there are more rudimentary uses for AI, too.
The EU report
A key form of AI use in occupational health and safety comes in monitoring, according to one European Union report. AI can automatically produce monitoring data and forms based on established protocols, and that’s invaluable in OHS – as many practitioners know, the key to protecting workers and also facing up legal risk is rigorous data collection and monitoring. This is especially true in the days of remote working that many businesses utilize today; with monitoring, they can be cognizant of the risks faced at home than can end up building into HR related OHS issues.
Artificial intelligence can, therefore, have a huge impact on occupational health and safety, though perhaps not in the way that technologists might anticipate. Instead, through sophisticated monitoring and conscious use of data, greater safety can be built and maintained. That’s good for safety, but also good for the understanding businesses have of risk.
