Association between risk factors of psychological restraint on smartphone usage and neck musculoskeletal disorders

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26560178
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Social systems engineering/Safety system
• Research Institution: Nagoya City University
• Principal Investigator: EBARA Takeshi 名古屋市立大学, 大学院医学研究科, 講師 (50405156)
• Research Collaborator: SHOJI Naoto ; KAMIJIMA Michihiro ; YAMAGUCHI Chikae ; AKIYAMA Tomohiro ; AZUMA Ryohei ; YAMADA Shota ; KURIHARA Takahiro
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 労働安全衛生 / 心理拘束 / MSD

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The public concern has been raised that prolonged usage of smartphone could lead to users' constraint postures and physical inactivity, resulting in development of neck and shoulder discomforts. The objective of the study is to confirm the association between risk factors of psychological restraint on smartphone usage and musculoskeletal disorders of the neck. As a first step toward achieving the objective, we developed a smartphone based application for recording time-series data from the sensors embedded on smartphone. To evaluate the reliability of data obtained from built-in sensors, analyses of sensor precision and accuracy were performed. The results showed a high level of stability and reliability of built-in sensors on smartphones, indicating that the smartphone based application has great potential to be applied in ergonomics or epidemiological research.

Free Research Field

人間工学