Dieppe-based Smartpods is Getting You Moving
We hear about it all the time. It’s the curse of the modern office worker. We’re sitting ourselves to death.
So we see standing desks, treadmill desks and bike desks attempting to counteract the effects of sitting for hours on end. But a Dieppe-based IT company has a different sort of solution, one that means you don’t even have to think about moving throughout the day since your desk will do it for you.
Leon DesRoches is the founder and CEO of Smartpods. Informed by his background in physiotherapy, kinesiology and architecture and inspired when he saw that his young son would follow an iPad whenever it was moved so he could keep playing games, DesRoches had the idea for Smartpods.
Smartpods are workstations designed to be innovative and dynamic, aiming to create a healthier lifestyle for office workers and reduce common illnesses and conditions related to a sedentary lifestyle. The desks move throughout the day and workers adjust to follow their work.
“At physio we give you exercises and things to do and more often than not, patients don’t do them,” DesRoches explains. “They’ll come back a week after and they’ll say ‘I wanted to do my exercises but I got busy. I had lots of emails. I had deadlines.’”
Frustrated by seeing this over and over again, DesRoches came up with the idea for Smartpods five years ago when he realized workers likely wouldn’t even notice if their desk was moving if they were focused on their work.
“We started our project with the University of Moncton then we quickly moved into a manufacturer apex here in Moncton and got our team together and created this automated desk,” DesRoches says. “The desk itself, it’s a pretty cool concept. It’s really the only automated desk in the world that moves people versus people moving to the desk.”
DesRoches says they’ve proven that Smartpods improve health for workers through a number of projects with organizations like Blue Cross and the federal government.
“We just finished a big project with the Canadian federal government,” DesRoches says. “They just purchased 125 of our desks to test the desks. 70 per cent of the users had less neck pain, less back pain. 63 per cent had an increase in productivity. We saw an increase in concentration, increase in energy levels.”
“The overall physiological effects of Smartpods of moving people versus people moving a desk was significant.”
DesRoches says interest in Smartpods from global manufacturers is growing rapidly and they having a number of pilot projects in the works to penetrate the US market.
“Our company is an IT company,” DesRoches says. “We’re not an office furniture company. We’re looking to affiliate ourselves with global manufacturers to be able to license our product in order to improve health and wellness and prevent injuries in the workplace once and for all in real time.”
DesRoches says the vision for the company comes down to allowing people to improve their health without causing any additional stresses of time constraints and finding time to exercise.
“We’re really on the cutting edge of improving the health but without putting extra responsibilities on the end user other than just moving,” DesRoches says.
“It’s one component that’s extremely important to keep the maintenance of the physiological benefits of healthy moving and healthy living.”