Last week, we returned to the symbolic Richard Doll Building at the University of Oxford for The Podium Institute’s second annual Conference on Sports Medicine and Technology. (Doll turned the tide of ministerial and ultimately public opinion on smoking’s link to disease – a fitting space given the potential public health impact of the collective work presented over two days of deep discussion.)
Keynotes and contributions brought together the best of science and sport, in a true melting pot of perspectives from clinicians, researchers, technologists, engineers and sports medics, across themes of Mental Health, Sleep and Cognition, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Wearables, Cardiovascular, Musculoskeletal, and Concussion.
A highlight was hearing from Dr Mark Hart, Chair of the FEI (Fédération Equestre Internationale) Medical Committee, on the challenges of promoting athlete safety in International Sports Federations, considering every angle from sports governance and PPE manufacturing implications to athlete acceptance and, at least from the FEI’s point of view, the challenge of also considering a half-ton animal when exploring injury prevention approaches.
Dr Lee Goldstein, Associate Professor, Boston University, provided the probable most talked about takeaway of the conference – “exposure to head acceleration impacts (rather than concussion) is the link to CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy)” – as he presented new insights and novel biomarkers for sports-related repetitive head impacts and CTE.
Rhys Hughes, Head of Medical Services at Gloucester Rugby, fresh from the pitch side of Gloucester’s first match of the 25/26 season, presented a truly practical screening approach for identifying posterior lower limb injury risk in elite athletes.
Open discussion, along with a healthy dose of differing opinion and lively audience participation, peaked during two scheduled debates on (1) using simulation and video analysis data to impose limits on training load, implement rule changes, or modify and enforce personal protective equipment, and (2) on whether instrumented mouthguards are robust enough (today) to advance concussion safety at all levels of sport; the ‘voice from the frontline of sport’ was particularly strong with expert inputs from Dr Simon Kemp, Medical Services Director at the RFU, and Prof. Nick Peirce MBE, Chief Medical Officer, England and Wales Cricket Board.
Central to the conference were contributions from the extraordinary DPhil Students from the Institute’s Doctoral Training Programme – the next generation of sports safety leaders – and incredible speakers who brought insight across varied themes, including:
- Prof. Keith Stokes, Medical Research, Rugby Football Union (RFU), Professor of Applied Physiology, University of Bath, on what instrumented mouthguards are revealing about head acceleration events in Rugby Union.
- Dr Emma Neupert, Senior Lecturer in Physiology (Sport and Performance), University of Portsmouth, who challenged the boundaries between performance and medical data and the ethics of collecting athlete data not being used.
- Dr Dario Cazzola, Senior Lecturer, Department for Health, University of Bath, on athlete monitoring and performance optimisation using computer vision and physics-informed machine learning.
- Dr Lisa Gannon, Associate Professor, Leeds Trinity University, who raises pertinent considerations for data collection and monitoring in the highly technical, individual sport of Gymnastics.
- Prof. Johannes Weickenmeier, Associate Professor of Brain Health, The Podium Institute, on the current challenges and opportunities of multiphysics and multiscale modelling of Traumatic Brain Injury.
- Dr Thomas Parker, NIHR Clinical Lecturer, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, on linking sporting head impact exposure to brain health.
- Philippa Health, University of Bristol, who presented a co-designed, gender-informed, student-centred Concussion Toolkit, a Master’s project turned marketed product, that firmly prioritised the athlete’s voice in supporting young people’s mental health post-concussion.
Congratulations to our colleagues at The Podium Institute on another successful conference!
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