A mobile app used for sports injury detection captures 99 percent more physical and mental health symptoms than traditional surveillance, according to recent research.
The app, which is designed for college athletes, collects data on various health symptoms. The researchers, who presented their findings at American Public Health Association's 2016 Annual Meeting and Expo, sampled more than 100 football and cross-country athletes at NCAA Division I universities. They found that the app detected 99 percent more health conditions for these participants than would have been captured through traditional sports medicine surveillance.
The researchers plan to use data collected during this study to assess how stress, sleep and sports-related head impacts influence athletes' symptom patterns. "We hope to use this information to provide a more holistic and accurate picture of how sports participation affects collegiate athlete health and wellbeing," said Christine Baugh, the study's lead researcher.
"The ultimate goals would be to improve the health care received by college athletes and also to make injury and symptom surveillance more robust in these populations," she said.