SaferMetrics: Using Tech and Data to Reduce Injuries in Contact Sports

In the book and the movie “Moneyball,” best-selling author Michael Lewis describes how the Oakland A’s famously used sabermetrics data to overachieve in – and eventually reinvent – Major League Baseball. Now, Sports and Wellbeing Analytics, an SAP partner based in Wales, is using what could be called “safermetrics”— technology and data analytics to reduce injuries in contact sports related to head trauma.

The company has developed a mouthguard filled with sensors that sends data to the SAP S/4HANA? Cloud platform. And in the same way the A’s transformed professional sports by creating a new way of looking at statistics, SWA wants to redefine the way sports are played from a safety perspective

“In short, we call it Performance Through Welfare, and that’s what this is about,” SWA’s CEO Chris Turner said. “For players, this is about safety. For coaches, it is about performance. By taking advantage of the data, you can instill safety into performance.”

To be clear, the mouthguard does not prevent injuries in contact sports resulting in concussions that have become the basis of a major discussion– and have put the parents of every athlete on edge. The goal of the technology is to create an atmosphere that is accepting of change based on the head trauma data that their platform gathers. 

The platform, called Protech, is the combination of the mouthguard, the technology that transmits data from training and games to a computer, and a software solution that allows the data to be analyzed in the right ways.

The platform was piloted with the Welsh rugby team Ospreys and is now being used by other rugby teams and is also gaining attention to prevent injuries in contact sports like boxing, ice hockey and even Olympic bobsledding.

Though it may sound unwieldy, the mouthguard itself, fitted with a rechargeable battery and sensors that transmit data, is only 5 grams heavier than a normal mouthguard.

The tricky part, Turner said, was programming the mouthguard to consider and eliminate many of the false positives that would naturally come as a byproduct of sports. For example, the mouthpiece may fall out of an athlete’s mouth and hit the ground, creating an impact. That data point needed to be defined. Other data points include vibrations caused when athletes spit, speak or shout. All those pieces of inaccurate data needed to be minimized.

Protech records severe impacts, measured in G forces. Measurements are transmitted in real time. Turner said if somebody sustains a severe impact during a match – and especially the ones away from the ball that nobody ever sees -- medical personnel can be informed during the match to check whether the player sustained a concussion.

“The real value for us is the view of the data that we can create once it’s been collected.”

Another great value of the technology is identifying patterns of impacts during training so coaches can alter their approaches to practices. 

“With a game, match or fight, the technology is used for monitoring, but training is a more controlled environment,” Turner said. “That’s when you can look for patterns of behavior, such as what’s happening during contact drills. Some drills are more intense than coaches expected. They made small alternations to the drills so that players still get the benefits, but impacts are reduced or eliminated.”

Turner, who recently detailed his company’s progress at the SAP Innovate Live event in New York, said one thing they started analyzing was where on the body – shoulder, waist, legs – a tackle creates the most impact for a player. That information is then shared with coaches so they can teach proper tackling techniques. 

They’re starting to use the data to rearrange the schedules of contact drills,” Turner said. “We’re not telling coaches or athletes what they can and can’t do, we’re just giving them the data to show when you do this drill, here is the consequence,” Turner said. “A coach could then choose to schedule high-impact drills earlier in the week rather than two days before they play.”

The National Football League, with its well-publicized concussion issues, would seem to be a natural fit for the Protecht platform. But Turner said the NFL is working on its own solutions and is not yet a customer. However, as more teams and more sports adopt the platform, it will broaden the reach of the analytics to benefit everyone.

“The real value for us is the view of the data that we can create once it’s been collected,” Turner said. “One benefit of using SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the ability to draw multiple views out of the data,” Turner said, which can help minimize the number and severity of injuries in contact sports.“If we have multiple tenants of different rugby clubs, with the right authorizations to access the data, I can produce views across the clubs. I can produce views in a hierarchy, so if I’m playing for the national team, or I’m playing for the club team, I can combine data to see trends, similarities and differences, and sort data across time. This aggregate data becomes really valuable for everyone.”

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ABOUT THAT MOUTHGUARD...

The mouthguard from Sports and Wellbeing Analytics, according to CEO Chris Turner, is the best tool for recording severe impacts. Even football helmets with sensors are not entirely accurate, because the helmet sits on a player’s skin, and skin moves independently of the head, creating false readings.

A few mouthguard highlights:

• The mouthguard is only five grams heavier than a standard mouthguard.
• One sensor reports if the mouthguard is dropped and doesn’t report drop as an impact.
• A nine-way gyroscope picks up how fast an athlete’s head is moving during an impact.
• The lithium battery, which lasts about two hours, can be charged in a wireless port.
• Because most training sites and venues don’t have WIFI, the mouthguard transmits data using a radio frequency.