Back Care Awareness Week 2009 - PostureMinder Ltd Supports Campaign by Offering Free Back Pain Treatment and Prevention Software for 100 Employers
BackCare, the UK charity for back pain sufferers, has launched BackCare Awareness Week, focusing on back pain in the workplace. Leading back pain prevention and treatment software provider, PostureMinder Ltd, is supporting the campaign by offering 10 free software licences to help 100 organisations protect their employees. The offer also includes schools and colleges that want to protect their students and staff.
Manchester, United Kingdom, October 13, 2009 --(PR.com)-- 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 encourage 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 software, 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
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-Background-
PostureMinder:
PostureMinder is award-winning software 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 Skype or 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.
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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 encourage 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 software, 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
###
-Background-
PostureMinder:
PostureMinder is award-winning software 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 Skype or 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.
###
Contact
PostureMinder Ltd
Dr Phil Worthington
+44(0)7715530787
www.postureminder.co.uk
Dr Phil Worthington
+44(0)7715530787
www.postureminder.co.uk
Contact
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