IBM Helps Organizations Monitor Their Workers' Safety with Watson IoT

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM Think -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced major collaborations with Garmin Health, Guardhat, Mitsufuji and SmartCone to monitor worker safety in hazardous environments, including those working in construction, mining and factories, using IoT technologies, integrated into wearables. IBM's Maximo Worker Insights will monitor biometric and environmental data to help identify whether employees are experiencing dangers or risk. Data will be gathered in near real-time from wearables, smart devices and environmental sensors to help organizations quickly respond to problems or react to changing environmental conditions.

Employees working in rapidly changing environments face shifting conditions, whether on the factory floor, on the forklift, atop a cell tower or drilling into the earth. Utilizing IoT to understand what workers are doing in the context of the dynamic environment around them – including heat, height, weather and gas levels – allows organizations to implement near real-time and prescriptive safety practices to help protect the wellbeing of workers and which should help them maintain lower insurance costs. 

For employees, this new offering monitors potential environmental threats to their safety and security as they work on the front lines.  For employers, the solution is designed to help them identify and respond to potential hazards in an effort to keep their workforce safe. Nonfatal workplace injuries account for close to $60 billion in workers' compensation costs in the U.S. Although safety controls and personal protective equipment are mandatory in most hazardous jobs, this solution is designed to help companies to identify and respond to problems or react to changing environmental conditions. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 3 million nonfatal occupational injuries were recorded in 2017.

"Worker safety is a critical priority for all enterprises and this collaboration is a major milestone in dramatically improving the way enterprises identify and eliminate hazards in the workplace," said Kareem Yusuf Ph.D., general manager, IBM Watson IoT. "We are thrilled to work with Garmin, Guardhat, Mitsufuji and SmartCone, and leverage their respective leadership and commitment to help improve safety in the workplace," continued Dr. Yusuf.

"Garmin Health is excited to work with IBM Watson to modernize worker safety," said Travis Johnson, Global Product Lead, Garmin Health. "Combining the powerful analytic capabilities of the IBM Watson IoT solution with the high-quality sensor data and long battery life of Garmin devices creates a great solution for remotely monitoring workers with minimal user burden."

"The implementation of smart protective equipment allows us to better analyze workplace data and provide important safety insights in near real-time," said Saikat Dey, Guardhat Co-Founder and CEO. "By working with IBM, we are able to leverage Maximo Worker Insights to bring smart safety to scale in the construction, manufacturing and refining industries."

"IBM Maximo Worker Insights delivers the near real-time insight that our clients need to address the safety of their workers," said Ayumu Mitera, CEO, Mitsufuji. "We are excited to work with both IBM and our clients to develop the hamon solution further. We see IBM as a valuable member of our team, not only providing powerful Internet of Things technologies, but also helping us identify new market opportunities around the world."

"We are thrilled to work with a global leader such as IBM and integrate IBM Maximo Worker Insight technology into our platform," said Tenille Houston, VP Communications and Marketing, SmartCone. "With the ever-evolving workplace, SmartCones' comprehensive end-to-end solution combined with IBM's IoT technology and advanced analytics provides the optimal pairing to best meet industry needs."

Garmin Health Companion SDK
Garmin, a global leader in wearable technology, is teaming up with IBM to offer organizations who deploy the IBM Maximo Worker Insights platform to receive alerts based on near real-time sensor data from workers wearing Garmin activity trackers. By embedding the Garmin Health Companion SDK in the IBM Maximo Worker Insights platform, supervisors and safety officers can receive near real-time notifications for high heart rate and man down scenarios, as well as review historical analytics based on the biometric signals from Garmin wearables.

Guardhat and its smart hard hats
Guardhat's KYRA IoT platform integrates and complements the IBM Worker Insights solution to provide near real-time situational awareness to workers and company operations through the use of Smart PPE wearables. Companies can gain deeper understanding of the field situation and raise awareness in the organization, to determine best practices and methods for risk mitigation thereby managing or maintaining lower insurance costs.

Mitsufuji and its hamon® wearable shirt
Mitsufuji, a wearable platformer in Japan, has launched a new wearable "shirt" called hamon® to track IoT sensor data from worker's biometrics to help ensure safety and productivity in extreme environments. The hamon® shirt, made from silver conductive fibers, collects a wearer's biometric data, including heart rate, body temperature and location, as well as environmental data such as humidity, temperature, noise and toxic gas levels, together with the use of IBM Maximo Worker Insights. By connecting to the IBM Maximo Worker Insights solution on the IBM Cloud, this data can be analyzed in near real-time, with alerts and alarms signaled on mobile devices to take a break, change locations, etc., before overexertion or injury occur.

SmartCone and its highly portable system
SmartCone, a provider of smart, IoT-based safety and monitoring solutions for securing vulnerable and hazardous zones, large and small, is working with IBM and integrating Maximo Worker Insights into its highly portable system to monitor worker safety in the utilities industry, community traffic, construction, mining and industrial environments with moving or dangerous no-go zones. Utilizing multi-sensors, audio/video, communication capabilities, computing and edge gateway capabilities, TheSmartCone™ system combines with IBM Maximo Worker Insights to provide supervisors and safety officers with near real-time notification and historical analytics on hazards related to falls, "man-downs," no-go zones, excessive temperatures and more. 

About IBM Think 
At Think 2019, IBM will outline new offerings, client engagements, partnerships, technology breakthroughs and developer tools that underscore how IBM and partners are changing the way the world works.  For more information, visit the IBM Think 2019 Newsroom: https://newsroom.ibm.com/think. Follow the conference on Twitter at #think2019 and @ibmlive, and go to https://www.ibm.com/events/think/ for the full schedule and live streaming agenda.

SOURCE IBM

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