Glossary
Ergonomics glossary
Plain-language definitions of the assessment methods Ergocure runs and the compliance and clinical terms behind them.
Assessment methods
- REBA — Rapid Entire Body Assessment
- Assess exposure to risk from whole-body postures, including lower extremities — particularly for tasks involving unpredictable, varied postures.
- RULA — Rapid Upper Limb Assessment
- Assess exposure to risk due to posture, duration, frequency, and force for the upper limbs, neck, and trunk — particularly in sedentary, computer-intensive, or precision work.
- ROSA — Rapid Office Strain Assessment
- Evaluate ergonomic risk at computer workstations — assessing chair, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and telephone configuration against validated office ergonomics standards.
- NIOSH — NIOSH Lifting Equation (Revised, 1994)
- Calculate the Recommended Weight Limit (RWL) for two-handed manual lifting tasks and determine the Lifting Index (LI) — the ratio of actual load to the RWL.
- OCRA — Occupational Repetitive Actions (Checklist)
- Quantify upper-limb exposure to repetitive, high-frequency manual work and predict the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and hand.
- JSI — Job Strain Index
- Assess the risk of distal upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders — specifically the wrist, hand, and forearm — in jobs involving repetitive or forceful exertions.
- OWAS — Ovako Working Posture Analysis System
- Analyse the distribution of working postures across an entire work cycle through time-sampling — identifying what proportion of time is spent in each posture category.
- LUBA — Loading on the Upper Body Assessment
- A posture-only joint-motion assessment focused on physical discomfort and localised stress accumulating in the trunk, neck, and upper limbs.
- MMC-ISO — Manual Material Handling (ISO 11228-1)
- An international standardised compliance protocol establishing ergonomic limits and risk estimation for manual lifting, lowering, and carrying.
- Liberty Mutual — Manual Handling Tables (Snook)
- A psychophysical design reference for the safety of manual handling tasks — including pushing, pulling, and carrying alongside lifting and lowering.
- Modified LEST — Workplace-conditions evaluation (5-dimension histogram)
- A whole-job workplace-conditions evaluation that scores five orthogonal dimensions on a common 0–10 scale and plots them as a histogram — so a physically light but psychologically punishing job, and its reverse, are both visible.
- RPA — Rapid Posture Assessment
- A fast whole-body posture triage that captures the dominant working posture and how long it is held, pointing to where a fuller method (RULA, REBA, OWAS) is warranted.
- NASA-TLX — Task Load Index (RTLX)
- A subjective workload index that measures how demanding a task feels across six dimensions — complementing the physical methods for mentally demanding work.
Key terms
- MSD (Musculoskeletal Disorder)
- Injuries or disorders of the muscles, nerves, tendons, joints and cartilage of the back, neck and limbs, caused or aggravated by work. Preventing MSDs is the goal of ergonomic risk assessment.
- DSE (Display Screen Equipment)
- The UK/EU term for any device with a screen — monitor, laptop, tablet. Under the EU Directive 90/270/EEC and the UK DSE Regulations 1992, employers must assess DSE workstations for every regular user.
- OSH Code 2020
- India's Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 — consolidates 13 labour laws into enforceable workplace health-and-safety duties. In force from 21 November 2025.
- SEBI BRSR
- Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report — SEBI's mandatory ESG disclosure for India's largest listed companies. Principle 3 covers employee wellbeing, health and safety, where ergonomics data fits.
- DPDP Act 2023
- India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — governs processing of personal data, including consent and erasure rights. Ergocure is DPDPA-compliant: video never leaves the device and faces are blurred on-device.
- ISO 45001:2018
- The international standard for occupational health-and-safety management systems. Managing ergonomic and MSD risk is part of demonstrating conformance.
- NMQ (Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire)
- A standardised self-report survey of discomfort by body region, used to screen for musculoskeletal symptoms before posture is scored.
- Action level
- The risk band a method's score falls into (for example: acceptable / investigate / change soon / change immediately), which dictates what intervention is needed.
- Grand score (final score)
- The single overall score a method outputs — e.g. RULA 1–7 or REBA 1–15 — after combining its body-segment sub-scores.
- Risk band
- A colour-coded severity level (low / medium / high) that maps a numeric score to an ergonomic risk category.
- Anthropometry
- The measurement of human body dimensions. Used to match desk, chair and monitor heights to a person's size in a desk-ergonomics assessment.
- Lifting Index (LI)
- The output of the NIOSH Lifting Equation — the ratio of the weight lifted to the recommended weight limit. An LI above 1 indicates increasing risk of injury.
- Certified ergonomist
- A qualified professional who assesses how work, tools and environments fit the human body. At Ergocure, a certified ergonomist validates every AI-computed score before it reaches a worker.
- ISO 11228 (manual handling)
- The ISO standard series for manual material handling. Part 1 covers lifting, lowering and carrying (the basis of the NIOSH equation and MMC-ISO); Part 2 covers pushing, pulling and carrying (assessed with the Liberty Mutual tables). Triggered by ISO 45001 Clause 6.1.2.
- ISO 11226 (static posture)
- The ISO standard for evaluating static working postures — the acceptable joint-angle limits and hold times that posture methods such as RULA, REBA and OWAS assess.
- ISO 9241 (office / DSE)
- The ISO standard for office and display-screen work — workstation, screen and input ergonomics. ROSA scores a workstation against these factors, and it underpins the EU / UK DSE regulations.
- Capture modality (QUICK / TEXT / HYBRID / COMBINED)
- How an assessment is captured: QUICK is a guided phone-camera capture; TEXT is a camera-free structured survey; HYBRID combines both; and COMBINED runs several methods together, each in its best-fit mode. All share the same scoring and certified-ergonomist sign-off.
- HIRA (Hazard Identification & Risk Assessment)
- The process of identifying workplace hazards and assessing their risk, expected under the OSH Code 2020 and ISO 45001. Ergocure's clinician-signed assessments populate the ergonomic-hazard entries of a HIRA.
- RWL (Recommended Weight Limit)
- The maximum load a worker can safely lift for a given task under the NIOSH / ISO 11228-1 equation, after applying multipliers for distance, height, frequency and grip. The Lifting Index compares the actual load to the RWL.
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