DUBLIN:Back pain is a growing with the rise in sedentary, desk-based work environments, and it will affect four out of every five Irish adults at some stage.

One of the key causes are long hours in front of a computer sitting in a poor posture and two researchers from University College Dublin - Lucy Dunne, from the department of computer science, and Brian Caufield from the department of physiotherapy - believe they have developed a system to counter this problem.

The posture vest is fitted with a small fibre optic cable running from the back of the neck down to the base of the spine which measures the curvature of the spine and displays this in a tiny icon on a computer screen.

This icon appears green when the user is sitting correctly; changes to yellow when the posture is borderline before turning red when the wearer is sitting in an unhealthy posture.

"What we wanted was a device people can wear that would be comfortable and not change the way they sit or work and at the same time record a lot of data," says Dunne.

With minimal changes the device could also be used with a mobile phone for people driving, with different ring tones replacing the colour coding on the computer interface. The device can also issue an alarm warning if the user is sitting in poor position for too long.

While the research started as a PhD thesis, Dunne and Caufield recently applied to Enterprise Ireland for development funding for the project.

The technology was among the demonstrations at the UCD exhibition stand at the Informatics Technology Showcase held by Enterprise Ireland on 3rd October in Dublin.