FW-HTF-P: Future of Work for Strength and Movement Training Professionals

这项计划拨款将重点关注力量和运动训练专业人员（smtp）的未来工作挑战，包括物理治疗师、职业治疗师和私人教练。这些工人构成了一个对伤害预防和恢复至关重要的领域，主要是女性，92.4万人的增长速度远快于平均水平（每年15-29%）。不幸的是，这个领域目前被工作压力、管理负担和倦怠所突出。smtp正面临日益增长的远程护理趋势（因COVID大流行而加速），过去十年来，基于结果的报销一直在发展。这一领域的未来工作将需要多功能和负担得起的工具来收集客观和明确的绩效指标。随着可穿戴传感器在人体力量、运动和稳定性监测方面的进步，结合机器学习，有机会推动客户/患者问责制，更好地了解进展情况，并丰富日益流行的远程培训课程。这将为该领域的未来工作者提供更大的工作灵活性，改善结果，并为培训师/治疗师和客户/患者之间的人际关系创造更多的空间，从而获得满意度。该项目将利用最近开发的一项技术，可以跟踪一个人在力量训练中的表现。它测量力量、运动范围和速度、休息时间、重复次数和组数、施加在运动设备上的力量和力量。算法使用这些数据，以可访问的可视化方式提供有关个人表现的详细报告。这项计划拨款将帮助制定一个研究议程，其中包括所有必要的融合学科，以改变该领域未来的工作，并为该行业提供一个急需的工具，通过增加培训成功来提高工作满意度和减少工作压力。此外，它将使这一领域未来的工人更容易获得，并使他们能够更灵活地获得康复，这将意味着在受伤后更快地重返工作岗位，并更广泛地改善健康状况，减少一般人群的疾病负担。这个项目将汇集几个学科，包括工程师、社会科学家、力量和运动训练科学家以及经济学家。调查小组的结构是为了实现多个目标。这一规划赠款将通过定性研究，包括一系列工人和利益攸关方访谈以及对相关保健政策的审查，力求建立工作环境的清晰图景。它还将专注于开发一个最小可行的原型，从适当的身体部分或力量训练配件收集数据，适当地解释传感器数据的算法，以及一个初始的web应用程序。最后，它将能够开发和评价具有smtp的培训模块。在评估规划拨款的结果时，将考虑三个研究重点——未来工作、未来工作者和未来技术。在适当的情况下，将使用定量方法来判断诸如技术性能之类的事情，并使用诸如访谈和标准化调查之类的定性评估来评估社会和感知驱动因素。该项目由人类-技术前沿跨部门计划的未来工作资助，旨在通过推进与人类工人和谐运作的智能工作技术的设计，促进对工作环境中相互依赖的人类-技术伙伴关系的更深层次的基本理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This planning grant will focus on the future of work challenges for strength and movement training professionals(SMTPs) that include physical therapists, occupational therapists, and personal trainers. These workers make up a field that is essential to injury prevention and recovery, predominantly female, and 924,000 strong growing much faster than average (15-29% per year). Unfortunately, this field is currently underscored by job strain, administrative burden, and burn out. SMTPs are facing an increasing remote care trend (accelerated by the COVID pandemic), and outcome-based reimbursement has been evolving over the last decade. The future of work in this area will require versatile and affordable tools to collect objective and clear performance metrics. With advances in human strength, movement, and stability monitoring with wearable sensors, combined with machine learning there is an opportunity to drive client/patient accountability, give better insights into progress, and enrich increasing popular remote training sessions. This will give future workers in this area greater work flexibility, improve outcomes, and create more room for the human connection both trainer/therapist and client/patient draw satisfaction from. The project will leverage a recently developed technology that can track a person’s performance during strength training. It measures strength, range and speed of motion, rest time, number of reps and sets, force applied to the exercise equipment, and power. Algorithms use these data to provide detailed reports on a person’s performance with accessible visualization. This planning grant will help develop a research agenda thatincludes all the necessary convergent disciplines to transform the future of work in this area and provide the industry with a much-needed tool that promotes greater job satisfaction and reduced job strain through increased training successes. In addition, it will enable future workers in this area to be more accessible and enable more flexible access to rehabilitation, which will mean faster return to work after injury and more broadly improve wellness and reduce disease burden in the general population. This project will bring together several disciplines, including engineers, social scientists, strength and movement training scientists, and economists. The investigator team is structured to achieve multiple convergent goals. This planning grant will seek to establish a clear landscape of the work context through qualitative research including a series of worker and stakeholder interviews and review of relevant healthcare policies. It will also focus on the development of a minimum viable prototype to collect data from the appropriate body segment or strength training accessory, algorithms to appropriately interpret the sensor data, and an initial web application. Finally, it will enable the development and evaluation of a training module with SMTPs. Each of the three research thrusts – future work, future workers, and future technology – will be considered when evaluating the outcomes of the planning grant. Quantitative methods will be used where appropriate to judge things like technology performance and qualitative assessments such as interviews and standardized surveys will be used to assess the social and perception driven elements. This project has been funded by the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier cross-directorate program to promote deeper basic understanding of the interdependent human-technology partnership in work contexts by advancing design of intelligent work technologies that operate in harmony with human workers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.