A Halifax entrepreneur with a background in kinesiology has launched an artificial intelligence-enabled app aimed at reducing workplace injuries through better ergonomic practices.

Christian Browne is the founder of Vergo — a computer vision and data analytics system that analyzes labourers' body movements and flags working practices that put them at greater risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Depending on internet speeds, users can upload a 15- to 30-second video clip and receive an analysis in a little over three minutes .

Browne, who has launched his product without raising capital and owns 100 percent of the company, originally trained as a kinesiologist before going on to earn an MBA and a law degree from the University of Central Lancashire in England. Vergo also employs a machine learning specialist and a data architect.

“The video in the deliverable is colour-coded,” said Browne in an interview. “Each segment of your body, there’s a skeletal overlay that comes out, and it’s very simple and intuitive to understand. Green is neutral, so there’s a very low risk of injury, yellow or orange is a medium risk, and red means there’s a high chance an injury may occur if you continue in this high-risk posture.”

A screenshot from the Vergo app.

People whose movements are flagged as placing them at risk of injury can receive safety training via short video lessons from Vergo, and where necessary, the platform can also suggest changes in the physical work environment to lower the chances of mishaps.

“A lot of organizations — small, medium and large organizations — struggle with an ergonomic training," said Browne. "Long gone are the days of those old archaic, ergonomic training videos that you would watch when you were onboarding to your first job. These are short, two- to three-minute max videos on the principles of human movement.

"And these principles can be used both in the workplace, and also your daily life outside of work.”

The creation of Vergo, Browne added, was the result of his participation in an innovation challenge hosted by the Saskatchewan Construction Safety Association, or SCSA and government agency Innovation Saskatchewan. Browne’s team, then called Betterworks, won the competition last year, bagging a $10,000 grant and going on to anounce early plans for Vergo at the SCSA's Constructing Safety Leadership Conference in April 2022.

Browne’s main focus at launch is scaling the business in Atlantic Canada, including potentially via Nova Scotia’s provincial Occupational Health and Safety Education Trust Fund, which helps businesses and industry groups pay for workplace safety training. Soon, he also hopes to tap the lucrative American market.

Vergo analyzes the movements of someone in a video via a type of AI called computer vision, in this case relying on a combination of a “pre-trained” model and an analysis system based on the Rapid Entire Body Assessment standard for ergonomics developed by researchers at the U.K.’s Loughborough University. (Pre-trained computer vision models can help software developers avoid duplicating costly work already performed by others, since computer vision technology tends to have a wide range of applicable use cases.)

Looking ahead, Browne is focused on building out Vergo’s business development and technological capabilities, as well as possibly pursuing funding from Invest Nova Scotia or the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

"We would like to look at how we can use computer vision in different working environments, for example mining, where it’s a low-light environment," he said. "So how does computer vision play into that? What are some of the limitations, and its capabilities?”