Alertness research could be life-saving for drivers and workers

Thousands of Australians could be spared from injury by the work of an exciting research consortium launched today that is charged with alleviating fatigue and boosting productivity.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Alertness, Safety and Productivity is an alliance of technology companies, academics, regulators and employers who are joining forces to develop cutting-edge new devices and systems that help protect workers and drivers from fatigue.

The centre, established with a $14.48 million contribution over seven years from the Australian Government, is claimed to be the first of its kind internationally to tackle the growing problem of sleep disruption with practical multidisciplinary projects driven by those who will develop and utilise the technology.

“Never before have we seen such a dynamic approach to solving the issue of fatigue and its damaging effect on workplaces and our roads,” says Anthony Williams, chief executive of the CRC.

“With our 24-hour society, more Australians are working shifts or getting less shut-eye, and suffering serious sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnoea. The impact on alertness has a worrying knock-on effect for workplace productivity and injury statistics,” Williams says.

Almost 10,000 serious workplace injuries and more than 25,000 serious road crash injuries are caused by poor alertness each year. The cost to the Australian economy is substantial - over $5 billion a year in lost productivity and healthcare costs, and over $31 billion a year in the loss of healthy life.

“We’re planning on turning that around with a range of personalised, state-of-the-art tools that will improve alertness, boost performance and make our country safer,” Williams says.

The consortium has the audacious goal of reducing injuries by 9000 a year by 2028, saving the health system almost $2 billion in costs arising from fatigue-related injuries. Focusing on monetary benefits alone, the CRC is projected to deliver public benefits valued at more than $196.5 million over 15 years.

Research Program Leader Professor Shantha Rajaratnam from Monash University says the consortium will be charged with developing tools that measure alertness accurately, predict critical lapses and intervene before poor alertness impairs productivity and safety.

“Through the discovery of new biomarkers of alertness, we will be able to create new devices that test a worker’s sweat or saliva for these signals, before operating machinery or getting behind a wheel.  An accurate, real-time alertness test such as this could be life-saving.”

Research will also focus on developing dynamic lighting systems that can reset the body clock and directly activate the brain to improve alertness and performance. These smart lights could be personalised for individuals or used office-wide to predict when a person’s alertness is starting to wane.

“Carefully timed light exposure, potentially in the blue short-wavelength range, could give these workers a boost in alertness to get through their shift, feeling clear-headed and up to the job,” Professor Rajaratnam says.

The group will also work to better identify and treat people at risk of sleep disorders like insomnia or sleep apnoea.

“Sleep disorders are highly prevalent in our society - but current tools to detect and manage many of these disorders are limited and we have no way of identifying which individuals are at most at risk of so-called alertness failure,” Professor Rajaratnam says.

“By identifying the vulnerable individuals, we could develop targeted treatments, vastly improving safety and performance of workers.”

The CRC brings together 26 diverse organisations, among them large multinationals, small Australian technology companies, universities, regulators, insurers, policy agencies and employers.

Research nodes are located in SA, NSW and Vic, with an integrated industry placement program helping to build capacity among young Australian researchers and companies.

Facts and figures about fatigue in Australia

• More than 18% of adults report sleeping less than six hours a night regularly, with sleep disorders affecting over 20% of the population.
• One in five serious car crash injuries are attributed to impaired alertness, making it the largest identifiable and preventable cause of transport accidents.
• 16% of the Australian workforce are shift workers, who experience impaired alertness due to inadequate sleep and disruption of the 24-hour body clock.
• 45% of the truck drivers have a sleep disorder causing impaired alertness.
• Employees with a sleep disorder have a 50% increased risk of occupational injury, absenteeism and error or safety violation attributed to fatigue.