While recently using Skype Video I noticed that my posture was quite poor in the reflected video feed from my computer. Bad Posture is a major contributor to work related injuries for knowledge workers.

I quickly saw an opportunity to use this technology to build an application to alert users when they are in a poor posture. A simple implementation of this could work via a widget on my desktop that would alert the user when they adopt in a bad posture for a set period i.e. 30+ seconds.The alert could be non intrusive (i.e. change the task bar color or raise a warning flag). The system could also be used to generate a posture analysis report. For example it could track a users posture over a given time frame (i.e. a week) and then generate an automated report on the posture ‘fitness’ of a user.

Enterprise risk management and health and safety divisions could be a potential target market as it could help protect the company from litigation and reduce the cost of healthcare. Individuals could also download and install the application for personal use.

A quick search of Google found some interesting solutions in this space (http://www.postureminder.co.uk) but   additional market research could be worthwhile in this area.

>>> Tweaking this for in car driving the image recognition algorithm could be adopted to detect the onset of sleep i.e. blinking, slouching, head falling etc…). It could be embedded in the car and also linked to 3G phones for hands free video while driving.