ABSTRACT
Paper, pencil, and video cameras have prevailed as the de facto method of data entry for posture checklists by ergonomists and occupational health professionals (e.g., occupational therapists). This can severely burden the evaluator with large quantities of paperwork, compromise the accuracy of the information gained, and increase the associated costs of the delivery and planning of ergonomics services. Errors can occur upon completing the posture checklists at the point of data entry, while transcribing the data for digitization to a computer database, or while processing the information for tabulating scores and generating reports. Virtually all of the “repackaging” of data recorded on paper to electronic format for distribution to centralized or remote databases occurs at the evaluator’s office, where it must be transcribed by hand or through an optical character recognition (OCR)-based system. Portable and mobile solutions are therefore needed, not only to facilitate electronic data entry at the point of service, but also to distribute it to various end users and devices, where these data can be stored or processed for report generation or integrated with other databases.
