In the continued pursuit of excellence into academic research in sports injury and delivering more effective, safer use of player and athlete data, Podium Analytics has identified the need for an independent Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for Global Sport that can help accelerate research and science in sports injury.
Since its inception five years ago, charity Podium Analytics has continued to identify and develop new opportunities that can catalyse research progress through the collection, curation and secure access to sports injury-related data.
TREs are controlled digital environments used to store or analyse sensitive data securely, allowing researchers to undertake in-depth analysis on rich, joined-up datasets without them seeing any identifiable information. They provide an opportunity to impose higher standards in how commonly used datasets are stored and curated and have been proven to be incredibly successful in other areas of medical sciences over the past decade or so.
The TRE for Global Sport by Podium Analytics will deliver a coherent approach to data curation in a single, secure platform and will endeavour to have the same impact in sports injury research that has been achieved in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other areas of medical science. With everyone behind it, the TRE has the potential to start a movement that will accelerate sports injury research globally.
International Federations (IF), National Governing Bodies (NGB) and Professional Leagues have been commissioning academic research into sports injury for many years, resulting in many steps forward in the field of sports injury and prevention, but they have also left many opportunities un-investigated or untapped due to the constraints of the approach, the economics of the sport or the diversity of academic institutions that are able to access data to undertake research on a specific issue. The specific nature of the research, the structure of the research agreements and the nature of consents obtained from players has usually meant that data is not available to other researchers within academic institutions on behalf of the same sport. The TRE looks to change that and create a one stop shop for all data, solving a major issue for all Sports Governing Bodies and Professional Leagues who put the advancement of player welfare at the top of their agenda.
Podium is delighted to announce that World Rugby is the inaugural global sport that will be joining the platform, showing a continued and shared commitment to creating a world of more sport and less injury.
Dr Éanna Falvey, Chief Medical Officer for World Rugby, commented on their commitment to being the first International Federation to sign up: “At World Rugby, it is advantageous to bring all our sports injury and research data into one place – a single solution. We had been having a number of conversations and when the team at Podium Analytics first presented the TRE to us, we could see how important this would be for the future of sport and, in particular, for us in rugby. It was instantly something we very much wanted to be part of and solved a very real issue that we were facing in research. We are excited to be part of shaping the future of our sport through this innovation into research.”
Andy Hunt, CEO at Podium Analytics, added: “We are delighted to have World Rugby as the inaugural sport’s governing body and we hope many other International Federations and NGBs will follow suit to help us seize the collective opportunity to advance research into key sports injuries. At Podium, we are on a journey to reduce and manage injury in sport and we are absolutely committed to delivering opportunities that provide such a significant step forward in the world of sports research.”