Q&A with Oliver Sharpe, the COO of Amp Health

RamaOnHealthcare September 9, 2024

Reimagining the Grind: Tailored Technology Leading the Way in Industrial Labor Management and Cost Containment

Today, RamaOnHealthcare talks with Oliver Sharpe, the COO of Amp Health. He has over a decade of leadership experience bringing innovative products to market, and is passionate about the intersection of technology, sports, and healthcare.

Oliver Sharpe, the Co-Founder and COO of Amp Health

RamaOnHealthcare (ROH): The vast physical labor market includes many industries and stakeholders. Can you provide some context on the size of this market, the types of entities involved, and what challenges or health trends have emerged that led you to bring this tailored technology to market?”

Oliver Sharpe (OS): Approximately 80% of the global workforce, nearly 2.7 billion professionals, fall into the “deskless” category. This includes roles of airplane baggage handlers (e.g., Delta), warehouse order pickers (e.g., Amazon), construction laborers (e.g., Turner Corporation), firefighters, utility workers (e.g., Exelon), pharmaceutical manufacturers (e.g., Merck), and workers in large food and beverage processing (e.g., PepsiCo). Physical labor is everywhere, even in big-box retail like Target and Walmart. The scope of this workforce is vast, with roles demanding highly repetitive movements that put constant strain on muscles and ligaments, leading to inevitable wear and tear.

Today’s challenges are significant in these environments, especially in the post-pandemic labor market. Companies can’t afford to lose the talent they have, and retention strategies within HR/COO are more crucial than ever.

When workers on the production line are sidelined by injury or pain, their workload often falls onto others, increasing strain and exhaustion on the remaining team members. The total cost of these work injuries in 2022 was a staggering $167.0 billion! This includes $50.7 billion in wage and productivity losses, $37.6 billion in medical expenses, and $54.4 billion in administrative expenses.

When we examine this demographic closely, it’s clear these frontline workers are dealing with muscle and ligament breakdowns, pain, and strains that lead to significant costs for employers. We’ve done our due diligence and are deeply committed to the well-being of this specific employee cohort, not just during their shifts but in their lives outside of work.

We want healthy moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents to engage in life during their downtime fully. Combining passion with our technology’s roots in athlete management at Olympic and Professional levels, we’ve developed something truly unique and powerful for this industry. Our solution is embraced by those who recognize the importance of early musculoskeletal risk detection, injury prevention, and proactive care—it works!

ROH: Cost containment is a significant concern for companies in the industrial sector, particularly when it comes to medical expenses and workers’ compensation. How does your solution contribute to reducing these costs, and what measurable savings can companies expect?

OS: Every day, we see injury prevention specialists, environmental health and safety personnel, ergonomists, athletic trainers, and occupational health executives adopting a more preventative and predictive approach to employee care. With software and data management platforms like Amp, these professionals can conduct movement analyses using just a mobile device to establish a simple, functional capacity score for employees. This real-time data allows them to identify physical risks and intervene immediately by proactively assigning strength and conditioning protocols or stretch and flex programs.

Early in the game, this business intelligence helps mitigate physical strain and prevent injuries, aiming to avoid costly recordable OSHA events. According to a recent Travelers impact injury report, a staggering 35% of workplace injuries occur during a worker’s first year on the job, resulting in over 6 million missed workdays. First-year injuries account for 32% of all workers’ compensation claims, with the average cost per medically consulted injury around $40,000. In the case of musculoskeletal disorders, indirect costs, such as lost productivity, can be up to five times the direct costs. We are seeing employers attack these first-year injuries and the resulting costs by assessing new hires, placing them in positions well suited to their capabilities, and preparing them for the rigors of their job.

Another area where we’re seeing a strong Return on Investment is consolidating various point solutions currently used by care professionals employers to manage their employed populations. Amp unifies risk assessment, incident and document management, and data analytics into one seamless platform, replacing disparate systems that often don’t communicate with one another. The efficiency, effectiveness, and management of one solution housing all critical data is a central “wish list” theme from our clients.

ROH: In terms of implementation, how seamless is integrating your technology into existing industrial operations? Can you describe the various onboarding processes or workflow use cases that support adopting your software?

OS: Great question! Implementation is straightforward and frictionless with our SaaS offering. Our priority is to alleviate the challenges of working with multiple systems, allowing clients to focus on a centralized, standardized, and unified approach to risk identification, prevention, and proactive care. All stakeholders operate from one system, one playbook, and one set of discrete data.

We help clients define their directives and configure the system accordingly—whether it’s functional movement screening, incident documentation, educational resources, or business intelligence and analytics. For example, some clients prioritize screening new hires before they begin physically demanding jobs to assess their fitness levels.

Providers can recommend specific exercises to prevent injuries using our motion-capture FMS assessment. Additionally, we have clients retrospectively analyzing last year’s incidents to reassess laborers and consider work hardening or job conditioning consults. Many recognize the need to support aging workers with targeted stretching and strengthening exercises to combat the daily grind. Others are focused on early incident and symptom documentation to identify trends or hot spots, which can be re-evaluated from an ergonomic and systems engineering perspective.

ROH: This is an exciting field with immense opportunity, especially given that many of us don’t fully understand the physical labor challenges. Thank you for sharing. Could you enlighten us a bit more on your roadmap?

OS: Thank you for the kind words. We are truly honored to support this critical workforce. We will focus on advancing predictive analytics and modeling through machine learning, enhancing interoperability through API availability, and refining ergonomic movement screening.

Additionally, we’re committed to improving the overall customer-client experience. Ultimately, the success of our product and solutions is measured by the success of our clients. We remain steadfast in our efforts to lead the solution and the national and international adoption of Amp Health.