SpatialCortex Partners with Carolina Canners on National Safety Council MSD Solutions Pilot Grant
- Jun 1
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 14
SpatialCortex has been selected by the National Safety Council (NSC) as part of its 2026–2027 MSD Solutions Pilot Grant programme, partnering with Carolina Canners to evaluate manual handling risk in warehouse and short-haul delivery operations.
The grant is one of five MSD Solutions Pilot awards issued this cycle under the NSC's MSD Solutions Lab, an initiative established in 2021 with funding from Amazon. Now in its fourth year, the programme has funded 35 projects and invested more than $1 million in practical, scalable approaches to reducing musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) — consistently the most common category of workplace injury in the United States.
About the pilot
Carolina Canners, a beverage bottler with warehousing, distribution and short-haul delivery operations, will use SpatialCortex's MOVA wearable sensor technology to identify material handling risk factors and evaluate the effect of targeted interventions on absence and injury rates. The pilot centres on two task groups where manual handling exposure is highest: warehouse material movers, and short-haul delivery drivers.
Both roles involve well-established MSD risk factors — repetitive lifting, twisting, reaching and carrying — often within dynamic environments where traditional observation-based risk assessment is difficult to apply consistently.
Rather than relying on generalised, industry-level injury data, the project will generate task-level biomechanical evidence — measuring how specific roles and specific movements contribute to MSD risk across a working shift, and using that evidence to guide which interventions are worth implementing.
Why this matters
In 2023–2024, the U.S. private sector reported 937,620 musculoskeletal disorder cases involving days away from work, restricted duty, or job transfer, according to National Safety Council analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data — including 484,620 cases involving days away from work specifically. Transportation and warehousing, the sector this pilot sits within, reported a total recordable injury and illness rate of 4.5 cases per 100 full-time workers in 2023, against an all-industry private-sector rate of 2.4. Order pickers, material movers and delivery drivers are consistently among the roles driving that gap.
Short-haul delivery is a particularly hard case for traditional risk assessment. Loads, vehicle layouts, delivery access and time pressure all change from stop to stop, so a single observed session or supervisor walk-through captures only a slice of the risk a driver is actually exposed to across a shift — and having a supervisor present, or recording video, for every delivery run simply isn't practical. Warehouse-based roles carry a related problem: risk varies by task, pace and individual technique in ways that a job title or a sector-average injury rate can't distinguish.
That's the specific gap this pilot is designed to test: whether sensor data captured directly from the worker — across the full length of a shift, independent of location or supervision — can give a safety team a reliable, task-level basis for prioritising interventions, rather than relying on periodic observation or self-report alone.
What the partners said
Announcing the grant on LinkedIn, Joel Usher, EHS Specialist at Carolina Canners, described the selection as recognition of the company's commitment to reducing MSD risk for its workforce, and framed the partnership as an opportunity to demonstrate how data-driven change can improve safety outcomes in practice.
SpatialCortex CEO Kailash Manohara Selvan welcomed the recognition from the National Safety Council, noting that the MSD Solutions Pilot Grant gives SpatialCortex a further opportunity to validate how MOVA's wearable technology and data-driven insights can help organisations proactively reduce MSD risk in live operational settings — and thanked the NSC's MSD Solutions Lab team and the team at Carolina Canners for the collaboration.
What's next
The pilot will run across the 2026–2027 grant cycle, with findings from all MSD Solutions Pilot recipients scheduled to be presented at the 2027 NSC Safety Congress & Expo. SpatialCortex will share further detail on scope, methodology, and outcomes as the project progresses.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the NSC MSD Solutions Lab?
The MSD Solutions Lab is a National Safety Council initiative, established in 2021 with funding from Amazon, that funds research and pilot projects aimed at reducing musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace. The 2026–2027 cycle awarded $300,000 across nine projects.
What is the MSD Solutions Pilot Grant?
The MSD Solutions Pilot Grant provides up to $20,000 to NSC MSD Pledge member organisations to test and evaluate MSD-reduction technologies and approaches directly in their own workplace settings.
What will the SpatialCortex and Carolina Canners pilot cover?
The pilot will apply SpatialCortex's MOVA wearable sensor technology to material moving tasks in warehouse operations and short-haul delivery driving, to identify manual handling risk and evaluate interventions aimed at reducing absences and injuries.
What is MOVA?
MOVA is SpatialCortex's wearable biomechanical sensor system, used to objectively assess and reduce MSD risk in manual handling roles through structured, task-level assessment.
What industry is Carolina Canners in?
Carolina Canners is a beverage bottler with warehousing, distribution and short-haul delivery operations — an environment where manual handling exposure is common among material movers and delivery drivers.
