Why Real-Time Health Monitoring Matters for Safety-Critical Roles
May, 2025
As an occupational health advisor, one of the most pressing challenges I help employers manage is ensuring employees in safety-critical roles are consistently fit to perform. In industries like transportation, construction, manufacturing, and utilities, even a momentary lapse in attention or performance caused by fatigue, illness, or stress can lead to serious incidents, injury, or worse. This is where new technologies like Sense are changing the game for employers.
Why This Matters for Safety-Critical Roles
Safety-critical roles demand sustained alertness, physical readiness, and mental sharpness. The most common threats to this readiness include:
Fatigue, which impairs reaction time and judgment.
Stress, which reduces focus and increases the risk of error.
Undetected illness, which can silently degrade cognitive and physical performance.
According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), human error related to fatigue and stress is a contributing factor in 60–90% of workplace incidents across safety-critical sectors. Research from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) shows that fatigue alone contributes to 20% of serious road accidents in the UK.
Real-time biometric monitoring helps identify when an employee’s system is under strain—before visible symptoms emerge. For example, changes in HRV and resting heart rate can indicate early signs of infection, overexertion, or poor recovery from sleep.
A 2022 study in Frontiers in Physiology found that daily HRV tracking could predict viral infections up to 2 days before symptoms appear. Another study from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology linked dips in sleep quality and HRV to impaired decision-making in high-risk job roles.
Benefits for Employers
Integrating a tool like Sense brings multiple advantages:
Proactive Risk Reduction
Early detection of negative health trends allows for timely interventions—such as task reallocation, extra rest periods, or medical check-ins—preventing accidents before they happen.
Improved Productivity
Employees operating at or near peak health are more focused, responsive, and efficient. By flagging when someone needs recovery, Sense helps preserve long-term performance.
Enhanced Duty of Care
Demonstrating a commitment to employee health and safety not only helps with regulatory compliance but also strengthens trust, engagement, and retention.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Real-time health insights enable better rostering, reduced absenteeism, and fewer costly reactive measures. In a pilot programme with a logistics firm using wearable HRV tracking, absence days were reduced by 27% over 6 months.
Respecting Privacy
It’s important to note that the Sense system is designed to protect employee privacy. Employers see the Balance Score - a health readiness indicator, but not raw personal health data like precise heart rate or temperature. Employees are clearly informed about what data is shared, ensuring transparency and trust.
Final Thoughts
In safety-critical environments, fitness to perform isn’t optional - it’s essential. Traditional approaches to health monitoring, like annual health checks or visual observation, are insufficient in detecting daily fluctuations in readiness. Sense fills this gap by offering a scientifically grounded, real-time lens into employee wellbeing.
Employers who adopt this technology aren’t just investing in safety, they’re embracing a smarter, more humane, and more effective way to protect their people and their business.
