Celebrating SlateSafety’s 5th Anniversary: A Letter From the CEO

As we approach our fifth year in business, I am excited to share SlateSafety’s progress in providing real-time safety wearable technology to protect workers from heat stress and other preventable injuries. Our journey began as a project between my co-founders Tyler, Joe and I, while engineering students at the Georgia Institute of Technology and has evolved into a fully realized product and company that is making a difference in the lives of workers around the world.

Heat stress is a serious problem affecting workers in many industries, especially when wearing heavy personnel protective equipment (PPE) or in hot working environments. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), heat-related injuries account for thousands of injuries among workers each year. A recent study from California found that there is significant underreporting of heat-related injuries and that in reality there are an estimated 170,000 cases of heat-related injuries annually in the United States alone, resulting in an average cost of $80,000 per injury and $13.6B annually in injury costs alone. These injuries can range from mild heat exhaustion to more severe heat stroke, which can lead to hospitalization or even death if left untreated.

At SlateSafety, we are proud to be attacking this problem directly. Our dedication to creating the easiest-to-use wearable and IoT technology for real-time safety, with our flagship product, the BAND V2, is a big leap forward in this direction. Our team has worked persistently to create a wearable device that addresses the challenges associated with monitoring workers in large-scale operations, such as the need for a centralized data platform, reliable network connections, and ease of use.

The BAND V2 is an award-winning wearable device that uses cellular and radio connectivity to transmit data to a cloud platform that allows administrators and supervisors to monitor workers’ safety in real time. Unlike other wearables that require lots of interaction, the BAND V2 requires no input from the user; they simply put it on their arm and it senses when it’s on-body and begins transmitting. Our favorite saying from our customers is that the system “just works” after initial setup.

A corrective action is shown on a graph in the SlateSafety web app. The graph displays core temperature over a period of time. The core temperature triggered an alert (the red thermometer symbol) and the corrective action occurred between the alert and the green check (return-to-work alert). Most likely the individual slowed their pace or took a break after receiving a vibration from the device from the initial alert thereby showing the automated work/rest cycle that occurs when the BAND V2 is used.

 

Through the use of technology, we have empowered our customers with the BAND V2 to catch over 1,000 corrective actions (near-misses) in 2022 alone. Additionally, we have gathered over 50 million biometric data points across varied industries such as military training, steel, oil and gas, first responders and heavy construction, demonstrating the effectiveness of our product in preventing heat stress injuries and other preventable accidents.

However, heat stress mitigation is not all that we do. We are constantly innovating and exploring new opportunities to create products that solve our customer’s issues in the connected safety technology arena. For example, we recently launched the BEACON V2, which transmits environmental data such as heat index as well as relative indoor location tracking.

Looking toward the future, we plan to expand the use cases for the BAND V2 and work with our customers to integrate the technology into their standard operating procedures to eliminate heat injuries at their sites. We also plan to explore new areas of opportunity for our technology, such as lone-worker safety. For instance, recently we added two new features to the BAND V2. The first is the SOS TapAlert which gives a worker the option to double-tap the device (even through heavy PPE) to send out an alert when they are in distress to authorized officials. The second example is No Movement Detection this is an alert that will trigger if the device is being worn and the worker is not moving for a set period of time it will send out an alert to authorized officials.

In summary, SlateSafety has made significant progress in the past few years, and we are excited about what the future holds. Our goal is to become technology leaders in connected safety and are incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported us on this journey to continue to create innovative products that keep workers safe.

All the best,
Zack Braun
CoFounder / CEO,
SlateSafety

About SlateSafety: SlateSafety is a technology start-up based in Atlanta, Georgia at the edge of the connected safety revolution. The team’s mission is to bring reliable, rugged, and easy-to-use safety solutions to heavy industrial applications. SlateSafety has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the US military to accelerate the development of its IoT platform. BAND V2 was recognized in TIME as a ‘2021 Best Invention of the Year.