After bone and joint problems that make you unable to work, the first occupational disease reported by the active population is stress. Pathologies such as depression or anxiety affect up to 14.6% of the population, according to data from the INE (2020). The same survey reveals that among the risk factors for 24.4%, the most serious was having "time pressure or work overload" (24.3% in men and 24.5% in women).
To detect this mental load that affects the working population, the Valencia Biomechanics Institute develops the CarMen project, through which it analyzes the mental state of people and the optimization of different products, environments and tasks. Funded by the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE), it seeks to develop methodologies and systems for characterizing the interaction of people adapted to the particularities of different tasks, products and environments, and their effect on the mental load of all of them.
They will analyze both the tasks that employees perform and the tools they use. Control panels or devices that, in the case of railway controllers or nuclear power plant managers, can be very significant. "It has been shown that poor task demands can lead to disconnection due to 'boredom', while too high demands can have consequences of fatigue and stress," explains Mercedes Sanchis, director of Occupational Health and Wellbeing at IBV. Finding the optimal point is the objective of the study that has just started.
The analysis will be done by measuring sweating or heart rate through a bracelet that the participants in the study will wear - whose sample has yet to be defined - and which will allow establishing whether the person is within the optimal thresholds.
They will also undergo a rapid emotional characterization test to extract their basal state, their emotional map and their response to workload and stress demands. In the medium term, this process is intended to be done in real time, to be able to provide feedback to the worker and optimize the relationship between work demand and load capacity and thus reduce the probability of human error and mental fatigue.
At the IBV they consider that the conclusions can be key to the development of jobs in sectors in which they work mainly with information management, such as the field of Intelligent Infrastructures, or the health sector; specialties in which the attention of users is crucial in terms of performance efficiency and safety. Aeol Service, Airpull Aviation, Etra I D and Grupo Dominguis Energy Services participate in the project.
Sanchis explains that, in the case of the health sector, research will focus mainly on the interfaces that professionals in the sector use to carry out their tasks, but also on patient monitoring or carrying out interventions with new technologies. that allow operating without the need for the surgeon to be in the operating room. "In the case of safety, an example could be the position of railway operator who ensures both safety and the identification of possible incidents that may occur on the different trains in circulation," she says.
All in all, although it is not the main objective, Mercedes Sanchis recognizes that "a future line of work could be to search for the relationship between an inadequate design of work tasks with Burnout Syndrome, both due to too high or too low work demands." "
