Health Tech: Ergonaut Steve Davis On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With Dave Philistin

The magnitude of the problem…to create scalable tech you need to have the data which clearly identifies how big the problem is. With our particular technology we understand that the symptoms are musculoskeletal disorders, and we have the data gathered by the Department of Labor which identifies the number of claims filed under this classification. Based on the magnitude we know that the number of people who can conducted evaluations needs to be greatly increased. Our platform was developed to be scalable to address this problem.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ergonaut Steve Davis.

Ergonaut Steve Davis was a skinny kid born and raised on a beautiful mountain farm at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky.

For the past 2 decades he’s taught in the University of Kentucky’s College of Engineering’s True Lean Systems Program.

In 2000 he founded Ergonauts Performance Technology, who’s launching their tech platform in Q1, 2022.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

As my bio mentions, I was raise on a beautiful piece of property that my family has owned since the late 1700s. Growing up, we all worked hard. My family is honest, paid their bills, were kind and loving to each other and on more than one occasion, I observed them reaching out to help friends and neighbors who were going through some type of hardship. I never heard them mention helping others and never expected anything in return.

I’m the second of 4 siblings (two brothers and a sister). My immediate family raised tobacco and cattle and I didn’t know what vertical integration was then but we raise hay and corn as feed. There is always something to keep you busy on a farm.

When we weren’t working there were ponds to fish and swim in and creeks to play in. We spent the majority of our time outside doing farm stuff. It was a simple time and we were surrounded by people that we knew loved us.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Actually, there are two of them. I was working in the automotive industry setting up and operating computerized numerical control (CNC) machines(I trained as a tool and die maker).

The Plant Manager, Larry Palmisano and HR Manager, Tom Lehman apparently saw something in me. These guys called me into their offices and told me that they wanted me to consider becoming a member of their Leadership Training Team, which I reminded them I knew nothing about.

They assured me that they wouldn’t let me fail. They taught me to develop curriculum and conduct classroom training. I fell in love with changing people’s lives. The sparkle in people’s eyes and self-confidence when they’re learning something new is good for my soul.

There’s a bit of irony in my transition from the skill trades to my love for teaching…I grew up with undiagnosed learning disorders. Becoming an educator I was then able to view things from a 20,000 foot view once I understood that I learned differently. This set me free to learn and teach anything I’m interested in. I became interested in both ergonomics and tech and Ergonauts was born.

I’ve had several chances to communicate with these guys throughout the years and I always thank them for believing in me and giving me an opportunity.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I believe in the law of attraction. “What we put out into the universe is what we get back”

When I behave in a kind and loving way towards others it’s been my experience that’s what I get back. I don’t use the word hate, I don’t harbor resentments, and I’m not greedy in my dealings with other, there’s plenty for everybody.

You are a successful business leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Bulldog tenacity — At one point I had paid a programmer to develop a significant system. Within two weeks of launch, the programmer went rouge and started trying to extort me and my company. After a couple of months of negotiation, he finally turned over the code and he had essentially developed the bridge to nowhere. The code was useless, essentially a very expensive demo.

My initial reaction was I wanted to close the curtains, climb into bed, and pull the covers up over my head, for a couple of reasons. First, I trusted the person I was working with. I couldn’t believe I had been betrayed me and secondly we had put plans into place to deliver our product to specific customers.

I’d didn’t break the news via email. Those were tough phone calls to make as we had developed relationships with some really good people. I will say that I’m never surprised at the responses of people when you tell them the truth…I believe that human nature is to be compassionate towards others and that what my customers demonstrated towards me and our company.

If I hadn’t had the tenacity to hang onto my dream it would have been 20 years for nothing. Anybody can quit!

Gratitude — We live in a society where success is too often measured by the vehicle you drive or the house you live in or other external symbols.

I start my day early with a dedicated quiet and soft time, which includes making a gratitude list. It always includes waking up in a safe place, my health and the health of my friends and family.

This keeps me centered and content.

Practicing acceptance — I’ve watched people over the years suffering from the illusion of control. I’ve done it myself and it makes you miserable trying to control people, places or things. I have many examples where acceptance changed my view of circumstances but the most recent one…

I had Christmas all planned out in 2021. It was going to be a fun week at the beach surrounded by people that I love. The day I was supposed to hop a plane I found out that I had been directly exposed to someone who had tested positive for Covid-19. When I received that call my heart fell into the pit of my stomach. I knew I couldn’t climb on the plane risking exposing others and my initial reaction was I threw myself a giant pity-party. This is where gratitude and acceptance together pulled me out of myself. The same weekend there were over 10k flights cancelled with people stranded. I also remembered that there have been over 800k Americans who have lost their lives to this virus.

So, my only option was accepting the fact that my plans had been changes by something well beyond my control and I could be bitter or better…I chose better.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

They are classified as ergonomic injuries/illnesses (technically they are illnesses which are due to chronic or cumulative exposure to noxious stimuli, as opposed to injuries, which are instantaneous events).

Some diagnosis most people will be familiar with are back injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, etc… They are musculoskeletal disorders, due to poor ergonomics in the workplace. According to the Liberty Mutual Workplaces Safety Index 2021 the total direct workers compensation cost of injuries was $58.61 billion. The top ten of those injuries/illnesses cost was $52.28 billion (over a billion dollars per week) and of those top ten, three are injuries/illnesses due to poor ergonomics. The cost of these 3 classifications was $19.67 billion or 33% of the cost. This only represents the direct cost. The indirect cost is estimated at 1 to 5 times that amount.

Percentage wise, they account for around 33% of the top ten non-fatal, disabling injuries/illnesses annually, across all industries in the US.

Unless there’s something done immediately this issue is being super charged by the demographic variable of the silver tsunami. They’re the “boomers”, the 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. The youngest boomer is 58yo. Currently a boomer reaches retirement age every 8 seconds, or 10,000 per day. And the last of the 77 million boomers will reach retirement age in 2031…that’s only nine years. If employers think it’s hard to find employees today, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

It’s a workforce crisis heading toward us in spacetime. Even with automation and AI we can’t solve this problem. We’ve got to evaluate our processes and address the risk factors that cause suffering, and musculoskeletal injuries/illnesses are painful, to our workforce. Also, organizations must address this at a systems level to design in prevention rather than appraisal of the damage that’s been done. If not they always be operating in a reactionary cycle

How do you think your technology can address this?

Currently there are a fair number of people/organizations working on the problem, but not nearly enough.

The word ergonomics itself has been viewed in the safety and health field as kind of “black magic”. I believe that’s been somewhat intentional by practitioners to protect their fiefdoms.

Today you find those addressing the problem in three categories:

1. Organizations themselves have invested in internal resources. This is limiting by nature and typically follows the 80/20 rule. 80% of the resources are spent on 20% of the problems. Usually, these are problems that have reared their head because of a claim or complaint.
   This is an appraisal approach and leaves 80% of the workforce or workstations to fend for themselves or wait until there’s an injury/illness.
2. Third party organization. They usually provide evaluation services to organizations who don’t have the internal resources to conduct evaluations. These third parties are often occupational medicine clinics, physical therapy clinics or consulting firms that specialize in providing safety and health services.
3. There are also the solopreneurs. These are usually people who have some training in areas that allow them to understand biomechanics and invest in training that allows them to conduct workstation evaluations.

The typical evaluation cycle go like this…

• a problem is identified,
• someone investigates the problem by conducting a workstation evaluation, which usually take a minimum of an hour not including writing the report,
• the evaluator hand over a report to who ever ordered it, then that person must identify and purchase proper equipment to remediate the problem(s) that were not fixed during the evaluation,
• the purchased equipment arrives and then whom ever order it must find a way to get it assembled/installed.

This can take weeks.

Our tech platform, ErgoAlgo is designed to be an end-to-end solution. It’s also been designed based on “Lean Principles”. The same principles which have been used to reduce the cycle time in automotive production allowing them to produce a finished vehicle every 57 seconds.

Not only have these principles been responsible for major measurable efficiency improvements but the quality of the products and services have seen huge improvements in product quality. Lean is now being applied across all industries.

Users of ErgoAlgo are trained using on our state of the learning program. The training is sequenced in modules for greater human comprehension and immediate application which is the very nature of adult learning. Users can training anytime from anywhere and using the ErgoAlgo application to conduct ergo evaluations within 2 hours.

The application format itself has been designed to conduct standardized evaluation process. You can have multiple evaluations being in different locations and they the final reports will all be in an easy-to-read format. In standardizing the process/application technology evaluations can be conducted in 15–30 minutes, or a 50–75% efficiency increase. Additionally, we’ve designed it based on a poka yoke or mistake proofing model for more accurate results.

Once the evaluation is complete the report wring is quick and easy allowing the evaluator to produce a finished report onsite and email it to the client immediately.

The days of handing the client a report and off they go trying to purchase and have assembled equipment for risk factor remediation.

The client can click on recommended equipment, make a purchase and have the products on site withing 48–72 usually and there’s also and link to place an order for someone show up and assemble or or install upon deliver. Ergonauts has partnered for both products fulfillment and assembly/installation services anywhere in the US.

Our strategy in solving this problem is collaboration vs. competition. We’re not try to put anyone out of business, there’s not enough people to provide this service as it is. In fact, we want the 3 groups that I identified above to use our technology to be more productive and produce higher quality evaluations. Our platform is also perfect for the gig economy. Those who have prerequisite skills can use ErgoAlgo to be the Ubers of ergonomics

Our first launch, ErgoAlgo — Office is for office ergonomics. Not only was there an existing problem in the office environment but when employees were sent home for remote work in March/April 2020 due to Covid19 this problem became critical. In October 2020 there was national survey conducted by a large insurance company that showed 42% of those sent home to work were complaining with musculoskeletal symptoms due to poor ergonomics…not only were the employees sent home but the employers’ responsibility to provide a safe workplace and workers compensation liability went right along with them.

We’re developing 5 additional technologies that will be part of this platform to address different industries.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

I was working as a corporate safety Director for fortune 100 corporation back in the 90s. Several other operations had older work forces and had significant number of musculoskeletal disorder first reports. Although I picked up a minor and loss prevention and safety, I knew absolutely nothing about ergonomics. So, we would have an event or first report I would hire a consultant to come in and evaluate to workstation we would make necessary modifications for the risk factors and then wait for the next first report. Although I didn’t have any training in economics I did have formal training and education and quality systems management. I knew that the only way to prevent musculoskeletal disorders was to build prevention into our systems. So in 2000 left the corporation that I was working for and found it organized based on preventive systems.

How do you think this might change the world?

This technology is going to cause very positive change for tens of thousands of individuals.

It’s going to prevent suffering and it’s also going to cause positive change for businesses and organizations as they will be able to keep happy employees and risk avoidance in the cost associated with these injuries/illnesses.

It will also create many opportunities for individuals to work in a professional field that will allow them to have and own their own small business.

It’ll change all of those people’s world!

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I honestly don’t see any drawbacks.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1. Empathy…you’ve got to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the population who’s being affected by the problem. On a Saturday morning in 2012 I was inn the gym with my son. We were on our last set of squats and when I squatted down, I felt a sharp pain in my low back. My son was able to rescue me from the weights. Little did I know that my life had changed. Due to this musculoskeletal injury and the months of follow-up recovery work I can be completely empathetic to those who will suffer if these injuries/illnesses are not prevented.
2. Symptom vs Root cause…technologist must understand if the product they are developing addresses symptoms of a problem or the root cause. Often patients are referred to therapist for treatment of musculoskeletal disorders. There are many technology products on the market that address injuries/illness which are appraisal activities. Although they often get good outcomes the root cause is occurring up stream. That requires a different technology approach.
3. System fit…for a technology to be adapted within an organization successfully it must be part of an organizations system. Organization’s systems are based on well defined policies and procedures. An example of our tech, ErgoAlgo Office being adapted by organizations we’ve got to solve problem that would be apparent in their facilities management, purchasing and safety and health management structures.
4. Ethical quagmires…does the technology create ethical issues for targeted populations. There’s a scene inn the movie the terminator where the machines/technology becomes self-aware and decides that it should wipe out humanity for self-preservation. I don’t think I need to address the issues facing AI development. It doesn’t have to be this complex. Today DNA is being collected and analyzed at a rapid rate. We want to think this is all for the betterment of mankind but what if it’s predictive of future illnesses and used for exclusion of insurance claims. These are a couple of examples but founders need to look at the potential implications of their tech gone wrong.
5. The magnitude of the problem…to create scalable tech you need to have the data which clearly identifies how big the problem is. With our particular technology we understand that the symptoms are musculoskeletal disorders, and we have the data gathered by the Department of Labor which identifies the number of claims filed under this classification. Based on the magnitude we know that the number of people who can conducted evaluations needs to be greatly increased. Our platform was developed to be scalable to address this problem.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

For me it’s about a plot of ground 8’ long and 2 ½’ wide, the size of an average grave plot. How do I want to leave the world? Do I want to invest my energy in doing something that leave the world a better place or do I want to sell my soul for paper with green ink on it.

A clear conscious makes the softest pillow…sleep well!

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Easy, I’ve followed Marc Lore for years. My humble opinion is the most brilliant mind in business today!!!

How can our readers further follow your work online?

www.ergonauts.com

linkedin.com/in/ergonautsteve

www.linkedin.com/company/ergonauts/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.

Thank you, Dave, for the opportunity!