数据丰富的工作场所如何改善工人的安全、健康和体验（英）

CENTER FOR DATA INNOVATION 1 How Data-Rich Workplaces Can Improve Worker Safety, Health, and Experience By Eli Clemens | October 2025 Imagine a futuristic hospital. An automated system alerts emergency room staff that an incoming patient has a blood-borne pathogen based on their electronic health record, allowing the hospital to prepare additional safety precautions. An electronic system tracks staff as they enter patients’ rooms, reminding them if they forgot to wash their hands as they move between patients. And wearable health monitors tracking heart rate data and other indicators of stress and fatigue recommend when staff should take breaks to ensure that they stay healthy and provide optimal care.1 This vision of a technology-forward workplace in which an invisible layer of algorithms supports and protects workers is not science fiction. It is increasingly realizable with today’s technology, building on decades of developments miniaturizing computers, sensors, and batteries, as well as improvements in networks and machine learning technologies.2 The same is true for other industries and workplaces, from capital- and labor- intensive factories to white-collar offices. Technology—including data, hardware, and software—that can enhance workplace safety, accessibility, productivity, and convenience is quickly maturing. However, U.S. policy at the federal and state levels is woefully behind and not advancing at a fast enough pace to realize this potential. Current policy discussions about the future of work are inadequately narrow to keep up with the rate of advancement in emergent workplace technology. These discussions are also counterproductive, fixated almost exclusively around critics’ claims that data-collecting workplace technology is a means to one end: worker surveillance. What this problematic narrative does is both slow down potential upsides from adopting these technologies and fuel unproductive regulation. A productive policy approach to the advent of CENTER FOR DATA INNOVATION 2 emergent workplace technology would focus on two overarching goals: 1) accelerating development, testing, and adoption of innovative workplace technology and 2) supporting positive uses of the technology while mitigating negative ones. This report explores the future of workplace technology and the benefits such technology can bring to both employers and employees. It also considers the role of other stakeholders, such as technologists and policymakers, in this conversation. Without dismissing drawbacks that come with a more automated, data-driven workplace environment, this report instead explores options that policymakers have to incentivize worker benefits in the limited window before wider adoption of these technologies takes place. It also looks at the current state of federal and state policy governing the usage of workplace technology and concludes with practical policy recommendations that aim to spur discussion and new approaches to this topic. S