Computers have greatly facilitated our lives, but as a result we are all spending an increasing amount of time seated in front of our desks. The introduction of the computer led to a decline in physical activity over the years because nowadays many adults hold office jobs that require them to sit at a desk to work. During a typical week, many people spend more than 8 hours seated per day - meaning we spend almost 18 years of our adult lifetime sitting down on average!
A healthy sitting posture, especially in long-term sitting, is surprisingly important. Sitting incorrectly (=not active) can cause more problems than most people realise. Primarily, it leads to musculoskeletal disorders like back, neck and muscle problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, postural migraine, etc . However, the consequences of bad posture can go far beyond back pain or headaches. Several studies point out that sitting incorrectly may actually cut years off your life, as it affects blood pressure and can compromise organ functioning leading to increased risks of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and even cancer . For these reasons, several studies revealed that sitting has joined smoking and obesity as an important risk factor for the development of chronic diseases. This is why there are specific programmes and legal frameworks at national, European and international level (e.g. EU Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Strategic Framework 2014-2020) aimed at implementing specific measures to prevent occupational health risks, including risks of long-term sitting. Under this legal framework, many companies are forced to offer health prevention courses to their employees, which for office jobs include training for a correct posture when seated at the desk in front of the computer. However, sitting correctly and specially keeping a good sitting posture during prolonged periods is far from being an easy task. While we (fitbase) are offering such online courses since years, we now can - thanks to SitSmart - provide immediate feedback for the user based on the real time measurement of the integrated sensors. For current solutions like ergonomic chairs or wearables, such a feedback and analysis is not possible.
With our solution it will be possible - for the first time - to capture, monitor, detect and analyse sitting posture as well as sitting behavior. Ergonomical experts are often talking about "active sitting" as the one and only healthy solution for long-term sitting. With SitSmart we can calculate an active-sitting-score by analyzing the frequency of posture changes during the day. As soon as SitSmart is available on the market we expect it to be a succesfull, easy-to-apply companion technology that fights back pain and tensions due to long-term sitting effectively. We expect that our customers learn to sit in a more healthy way and to overcome back pain in the mid-term. Without the occurance of such health impairments the users will report better well-being and higher satisfaction, happiness and productivity at their office workplaces.
Besides the socio-economic impact of SitSmart we expect substantial growth for our SME. We already hired the Innovation Associate responsible for the SitSmart project with an unlimited full time contract and we plan to hire an additional sales person. We expect to convince Venture capitalist or Business Angels to invest in this solution within 6 months after project end.
