Digital Human Modeling for Musculoskeletal Disorder Ergonomics Researches in Healthcare

Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) is always considered as one of the most significant occupational injury in industry. In recent times, more and more people analyze MSD in healthcare. Meanwhile, Digital Human Modeling (DHM) can analyze human factors in Virtual Environment (VE) by simulating industrial tasks. However, few people involve DHM in healthcare MSD researches. This paper presented an approach of applying DHM ergonomics analysis in nursing investigation. The fundamentals of Nursing Tasks (FNT) were simulated in Siemens Classic Jack (Jack) with biomechanical DHM. Jack Tasks Analysis Toolkits (TATs) were adopted to evaluate human factors in MSD analysis. The TAT results and traditional questionnaire investigation showed similar MSD regions. It indicates that DHM has potentials to offer a visual analysis and enhance approach for simulation of dynamic system in healthcare MSD analysis to reduce the incidence of MSD in nursing.

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