Press Release: Back Care Awareness Week 2009 – PostureMinder Ltd supports campaign by offering free back pain treatment and prevention software for 100 employers

Back Care, the UK charity for back pain sufferers, has launched BackCare Awareness Week, beginning on 10th October, to focus on preventing and treating back pain in the workplace.

A study published just two weeks ago highlighted the EUR240 billion estimated annual cost of back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders across the EU. BackCare’s own figures point to a £5 billion per year bill for the UK economy for back pain alone

Back Care Awareness Week aims to persuade employers to recognise the problems around back pain so they can help sufferers and ensure employees can remain productive members of the workforce.

Office back pain expert, Dr Philip Worthington, inventor of award-winning PostureMinder, agrees that such awareness is vital: “We fully support BackCare’s aims in raising these issues with employers. Figures suggest anywhere from 4-7% of office workers take sick leave due to back pain every year, with the average amount of time taken off being somewhere around 18 days. But from our experience, and wider studies, for every person who goes off sick with back pain, some 15 others are suffering in silence. This must affect their morale and productivity at work.”

Dr Worthington added, “We’re particularly pleased to see Back Care Awareness Week focusing on early, proactive interventions by employers. However, we’d like to see it go a stage further – employers should really consider what they can do to prevent back pain as well as treat it.

“That’s where our award-winning PostureMinder software comes in – it actively helps people who work at computers to improve their posture and adopt healthy working habits. Used in conjunction with good quality office furniture it can really help users avoid developing problems in the first place, as well as helping existing sufferers recover from their back pain.

“Because we feel so strongly that prevention is better than cure, we’re supporting Back Care Awareness Week by offering 10 free PostureMinder licences to the first 100 employers who contact us via backaware@postureminder.co.uk. Our offer also extends to schools and colleges that want to encourage students or staff to improve their posture. This way, we can do our bit by helping 1000 computer users protect themselves from back pain and other computer-related ill-health”

For more detailed information please visit the PostureMinder web-site at www.postureminder.co.uk

Press release in response to new EU study:

Prevention is the key as new study highlights €240 billion annual cost of back pain and other MSDs

A new EU-wide study by The Work Foundation (www.theworkfoundation.org) has found that musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) such as back pain, neck pain and RSI-type conditions, account for nearly half (49%) of all absences from work and 60% of permanent work incapacity in the European Union.

The estimated cost to society in Europe is up to €240 billion every year, with 100 million European citizens suffering the misery of serious MSDs. Of course, these figures do not take into account the pain, misery and costs associated with the much larger number of people who suffer back pain and other ill-health without seeking treatment.

The research suggests that prevention and early intervention in MSDs ultimately reduces the burden on governments’ health and disability budgets, improves the lives of citizens, and improves employees’ performance. It suggests that governments consider more than simply the up-front costs of medical expenditure and incorporates wider socio-economic considerations – such as work productivity – into the financial and medical evaluations for preventing and treating MSDs.

Office back pain expert Dr Philip Worthington, inventor of PostureMinder, an award-winning posture correction and well-being software application, agrees: “This pan-European study reinforces previous national surveys that have highlighted the scale and cost of MSDs. It’s a real wake-up call, and the message is clear: prevention and early intervention are key.”

“It’s simply not feasible to treat 100 million people for back pain and other MSDs every year. We have to start trying to get these numbers down by addressing the causes, before people reach the stage where it starts to affect their work or they need to seek expensive treatment.”

In response to the study’s findings the EU is launching a pan-European Fit For Work campaign which calls for coordinated action from policymakers, healthcare professionals, patients and employers.

-ENDS-

-FOR EDITORS-

PostureMinder:
PostureMinder is an award-winning software package developed to promote good posture and healthy working habits amongst computer users, both at home and work. Its key innovation is to use any low-cost webcam, such as those built in to most modern laptops or purchased for video conferencing, to automatically detect the user’s posture. Whenever the computer user sits in a damaging posture for a prolonged period, a friendly on-screen reminder appears to encourage them to correct it. This helps directly reduce time spent in damaging postures, and gradually helps the user break their poor posture habits.

PostureMinder also includes comprehensive ergonomic training materials, reminders to take short breaks – or switch to non-computer-based tasks – at recommended intervals, plus video-guided stretch exercises and a hydration tool to encourage good hydration throughout the working day. PostureMinder is available for home, work or educational use, and won a 2007 British Safety Industry Federation Innovation Award. It can be used preventatively, or as a part of a rehabilitation programme for existing sufferers of back or neck pain, RSI and other computer-related health conditions.

Back pain and MSD statistics:
As more and more people move from manufacturing jobs to working in an office, many commentators expected the prevalence of MSDs to go down, but that’s not been seen to be the case.

Long hours spent at a computer keyboard, both at work and home, combined with the more general problems of lack of exercise and obesity, have had the opposite effect.

Recent surveys by the British Chiropractic Association have shown an alarming increase in back pain amongst children, with 45% of 11-18 year olds reported to suffer back pain in the 2008 survey, a 55% increase in just 6 years on the 29% figure found in an identical survey in 2002. The most significant change during that period has been the growth in social networking websites, which has led to a large increase in computer use by children in recent years.

Previous studies have shown that 80% of Americans will seek treatment for back pain in their lifetimes.

The main preventative measure for office workers in the UK has been requirement to train computer-based staff under the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992. However, the Health and Safety Executive’s 2007 report into the effectiveness of these regulations found that half of UK companies do not provide the required training, and that in any event such training had not significantly reduced the incidence of MSDs amongst UK office staff.

Poor computer posture may cause raised blood pressure!

Just stumbled upon a New Scientist article from a couple of years ago (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12457-bad-posture-could-raise-your-blood-pressure.html) that reports on some research in mice suggesting that there’s a link between neck muscle activity and blood pressure and even heart rate.

Not had chance yet to follow this up to see if there’s more detailed research been published, but if there’s anything to it it’s certainly interesting.  As the researcher says, “The pathway exists for bad posture to really have an effect.” 

And you thought it was just Windows driving your blood pressure through the ceiling!

Dr Phil

Free PostureMinders for UK and US schools

Prolonged computer use can have a negative impact on children’s posture and health.  This is particularly the case if they use laptops or netbooks that encourage users to hunch over their keyboards.

A survey last year by the British Chiropractic Association found that 45% of 11-18 year old UK schoolchildren had suffered from back pain in the last year.
Disturbingly, this figure jumped from 29% in a similar survey in 2002.  The only thing that can account for this rise is the increase in computer usage amongst kids, due largely to the explosion in social networking.

For the first time the BCA also surveyed 6-7 year olds – 32% said they’d experienced back pain.  I’m sure similar surveys in California would show similarly worrying trends.

Back pain and other computer-related health problems cause misery.  Back pain is estimated to cost the US economy over $100bn per year, while as long ago as 1995 the UK Health and Safety Executive estimated the direct costs to UK businesses at £5.7bn.  Back pain also restricts individuals’ ability to work, and their motivation to keep fit and active.

For the last 5 years I have been developing award-winning software, called PostureMinder, to help computer users improve their posture and adopt healthy computer habits.

PostureMinder Ltd is currently preparing a major initiative to offer our award-winning software free to UK and US schools to encourage good posture habits from an early age. This blog post is advance notice of our plans in this direction.

If you’re a parent, teacher or politician and are concerned about protecting the health and well-being of schoolchildren in your charge, please contact education@postureminder.co.uk for details of our schools initiative.

Let’s work together to help kids grow up with good posture and pain free!

Dr Phil

World Spine Day – Frightening new stats, and concern for our children’s future

A survey released by The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) on 16th October 2008 (World Spine Day) showed the scale of back pain, and particularly childhood back pain, in the UK.

Previous academic studies, notably by the University of Edinburgh of 4000 11-15 year old Scottish schoolchildren, have shown that plenty of our children are starting to suffer pain from an early age, and also found a clear link between the level of computer usage and the risk of suffering problems.  They reported 15% of regular computer users and gamers suffer frequent backache, and 40% suffer neck or shoulder pain.

Those figures are bad enough, but the BCA’s finding that 32% of 6-7 year olds report suffering back pain is frightening, which is why it’s been reported in major UK newspapers (The Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express).

45% report suffering some back pain by the time they reach 11 years old, up from 29% amongst 11-18 year olds in 2002.

The sources of this enormous increase include increasingly sedentary lifestyles, more time spent on computers or playing games, and the ongoing problem of carrying heavy bags to school.

The survey comes at a time when average computer use in the UK is reported to have risen by 400% since the early 2000s, presumably as a result of changing work patterns, more computers in schools, and the growth of broadband access.

Interestingly, I found an article the other day (sorry, can’t find the link just now – should have bookmarked it at the time) in which the UK Schools Minister admitted that, despite the billions of pounds being spent on re-building British schools, the majority of school IT classrooms are equipped with furniture that would be illegal in the workplace!

Alright, so kids typically don’t spend hours in front of the computer at school, and are normally made to take a break by lesson changes – but even so, this isn’t exactly joined up thinking. If you don’t encourage children to sit properly at their school computers, what chance is there of them doing so at home?

We have to start taking children’s posture seriously, otherwise we’re going to end up with a population that’s suffering near continuous pain, with huge numbers being unable to do their jobs – not to mention vast treatment costs and compensation claims.

Check back on the blog soon – we’re planning a major announcement on the education front to enable schools to benefit from using PostureMinder to encourage better posture in the classroom. In the meantime, if you’re a teacher, headteacher or concerned parent, please get in touch with your thoughts.

Dr Phil

CBI/Axa sickness absence figures…

The annual CBI/Axa sickness absence survey for the UK is just out, and shows a very small reduction in the number of sick days taken by UK workers:

The CBI press release

The Guardian

Probably the key quote from my point of view is: “Long-term absence (20 days or more) also continued to be a serious concern for firms. Although only 5% of absence spells became long-term, they accounted for a massive 40% of all time lost, costing £5.3bn. Long-term absence accounted for half (50%) of all time lost in the public sector, but under a third (31%) in the private sector.”

Long-term absences like this are overwhelmingly due to musculoskeletal disorders and stress. Taking early action to stop aches, pains and short-term absences turning into long-term sick leave has to be a priority, as Dame Carol Black’s recent review also highlights.

Prevention or early intervention with PostureMinder will really help on this front – at the first complaint of back, neck or shoulder pain, RSI or other aches and pains, install our simple software and advise the user to follow its advice closely (more importantly, give them the permission and support to take regular short breaks – don’t scowl at them when they do so!) Set all of PostureMinder’s settings to help them really focus on their health for a few weeks (e.g. fast posture reminders, short times between breaks etc. – the user can back these off later once they’ve felt some initial benefits)

www.postureminder.co.uk/business

Check your policy!

I just came across the following article about the many “products” that companies try to sell us that we don’t really need:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/money/insurance/article2602677.ece

Top of the list is payment protection insurance – e.g. the stuff that protects your mortgage if you can’t work.

Guess what?  Most of them don’t cover you if you have to go off sick with back, neck or shoulder pain, RSI or other computer-related ill-health, or indeed stress.

Given that it costs a fortune, and that probably a third of the working population in the UK work on computers, that’s not much use to many of us.  No wonder the payout rate is apparently only 20% of claims!

Professor Dame Carol Black’s review of UK workplace health and well-being

Prevention is always better than cure!

Dame Carol Black’s review of work and health is all over the news in the UK today (17th March 2008). It shows that ill-health is costing the UK economy a whopping £103 billion per year.

The media is really focusing on the huge costs of incapacity benefits, which isn’t surprising – over half of the £103bn figure is spent on long-term incapacity benefits. However, over £13billion is down to the direct costs of sickness absences, and the HSE has previously suggested that the overall costs of sickness absence are typically 2-3 times that figure, or up to £40billion.

At a time when we seem to be heading for recession, can companies afford to be incurring these costs? Are they just an inevitable consequence of doing business?

The big variations in absence rates between different organisations (generally public sector has more absences than private, small companies have lower absences than large) suggest not – there are things that organisations can do, and these things typically pay for themselves several times over.

Dame Carol’s review highlights the need to detect problems early and take action in order to reduce these costs, and proposes a huge expansion of occupational health services such as physiotherapy and stress counselling.

Early interventions like this show massive returns on investment, but nowhere near as great as taking cost-effective preventative action in the first place.

At PostureMinder, our concern is for computer workers’ health.

Although computer jobs clearly aren’t as dangerous as deep sea fishing or working on an oil rig, it does carry risks. The sheer number of computer workers means even low sickness absence rates will contribute hugely to the figures found in Dame Carol’s review.

Not only that, for evey person who takes time off with a back, neck or shoulder problem or RSI, headaches or eye fatigue, the HSE suggests there are up to 15 who suffer in silence.

If you’ve ever suffered back pain through hunching over your keyboard, or found yourself stressed and headachy from working too long without a break, you’ll be aware that the hidden costs of underperformance due to these low-level health issues dwarf even the huge figures in Dame Carol’s review.

The proven solution to minimise these problems is incredibly simple – sit in a good posture at your computer, and take regular short breaks. Easy, right?

If you look around your office, how many people do you see following this simple advice? If your office is like most, it’ll be almost no-one!

That’s why we invented our award-winning well-being and productivity software – PostureMinder – to help computer users to help themselves. It gives you a friendly nudge in the right direction whenever you sit badly or forget to take a break, without trying to force the matter and raise your stress levels in the process! This is great for helping you get over an episode of back pain, and even better for preventing them in the first place.

PostureMinder is an essential tool to help people feel better while they work, and protect their health for the future.

With computer-related musculoskeletal disorders on the increase as more people use computers from an earlier age than ever, it’s never been more important for employers to take preventative action.

Phil

Tomorrow (29th Feb) is International RSI Awareness Day.

Repetitive strain injuries are on the increase, and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (amongst other organisations) are busy in the media highlighting this increase and the costs to business of absences due to RSI.

The advice the CSP give for avoiding developing RSI and other musculoskeletal health problems is pretty straightforward – make sure you don’t over-stretch your body while you’re doing your repetitive tasks, and make sure you take regular short breaks. Isn’t it weird how few of us (myself definitely included) find it so hard to do these simple things?

The limitation of single-day campaigns like this is precisely that they are “one-offs”. Once the message has been delivered, that’s it. The same with employers providing DSE training once or twice a year – perfectly sensible messages seem to bounce off the impenetrable shield of our bad habits!

It’s precisely this problem that PostureMinder was conceived to overcome. Instead of just telling you once about how you should be sitting, it proactively helps you to sit like that. When you go back to your bad habits, you get a friendly reminder – nothing severe (some employers have asked for an electric shock, but we’re saving that for version 2.0!), just a gentle message to help you change how you’re sitting.

There’s no point trying to force the issue, people have to go at their own speed and assign their own priority to the issue, so we provide plenty of settings for people to adapt it to suit them.

Now PostureMinder doesn’t directly look at anything to do with RSI. But by encouraging you to take regular breaks, and not to sit in bad postures that are likely to have a knock-on effect on how you type, mouse, and hold your shoulders while using the computer, it’s bound to have a significant knock-on effect on your risk of RSI as well as back, neck and shoulder pain, headaches and eye fatigue. And it’s an effect that won’t be here today, gone tomorrow – unlike RSI awareness day!

Compensation Culture?

A lot of people who see our awarding-winning software take to it from the point of view of reducing the costs of absences and underperformance due to ill-health. Others see it as a cost-effective way to show their concern for the health and well-being of individuals.

There is, of course, another side to all this – the dreaded and much talked about compensation culture!

At the moment, computer-related musculoskeletal disorders such as back, neck and shoulder pain, aren’t really on most companies’ radar from a compensation point of view, or even in terms of general costs. Sure, the odd person will go off sick and need rehabilitation back into work, but in the UK at least most companies are partially insulated from the costs of this through our NHS.

Obviously some costs are incurred through providing private medical treatment, and through covering for absences, but the vast majority of the costs of these conditions are hidden – poor performance, making more mistakes, low morale, staff turnover etc.

In terms of the compensation culture, only RSI-related claims seem to have been brought to-date, and even then only in small numbers. There have been a few prominent cases, such as the bank worker who was awarded £250,000 compensation for developing RSI after not being trained properly.

However, widespread computer use at work or home has only really been with us since the early 90s. As other posts I’ve put up mention, there’s evidence that computer-related musculoskeletal disorders are a widespread and growing problem, especially amongst young people.

The no-win, no-fee lawyers have been very successful with a series of health problems, such as mining illnesses, asbestosis, vibration and hearing injuries. As the number of people employed in manual work continues to reduce, these are likely to dry up as sources of income.

Either the lawyers will need to find new health conditions to focus upon, or the number of lawyers will need to reduce as work dries up. In the history of civilisation, I’m not convinced the number of lawyers had ever decreased at any point!

With getting on for half the workforce using computers on a day to day basis, if I was an injury lawyer I know where I’d be looking. Employers with an eye on the longview shouldn’t just be thinking in terms of meeting their legal obligations – they should be looking to demonstrate that they have gone beyond the bare minimum and taken every reasonable step to look after their staff.

Training and good quality ergonomic furniture are obviously key to that. I believe PostureMinder is a cost-effective addition to this equation – it’s about giving your employees the tools to help themselves. By providing it to employees you’re making a statement that you care.

No-one knows what the future will bring, but it’s always worth taking out a little insurance.