Healthcare providers have struggled with data interoperability since the advent of the EHR decades ago, failing to fully connect patient information between systems. They may have an unlikely model to turn to for improvement: the National Football League.
During a speech last week at Forbes At the annual Healthcare Summit, NFL Chief Medical Officer Allen Sills noted that all 32 teams in the league report to the same EHR. Having all this player data in one place helps the league not only treat injuries more effectively but also prevent them, he said.
“If you think about all the injuries that occur in an athletic competition, yes, some of them maybe bring bad luck. Players accidentally crash, accidentally hit the ground. But there is a proportion of them (and we might disagree on the proportion) that I would call preventable. They can be prevented if we understand the drivers, if we understand the who, what, why and the circumstances of those injuries,” Sills explained.
The NFL shares its players’ health data with an outside epidemiological data science company, which provides information that helps the league better understand the causes of injuries, he said.
It doesn’t just share EHR data, he noted.
“It’s our game day stuff: medical reports from our 30 medical providers that are at every NFL game. It’s team tracking. We tag all the helmets, cleats and shoulder pads that the players wear. Every player wears a GPS tracking device so we know how fast, how far, where they’re moving, what the spatial relationships are on the field. We have surface data, we have environmental data, we have engagement and we have video,” Sills said.
In his opinion, this comprehensive data set allows the NFL to study injury mechanisms more rigorously than any other sports league.
Today, injury prevention efforts are quite multifaceted, he added. They typically require input from several experts, including nutritionists, behavioral health specialists, sports scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, performance personnel, and equipment managers.
For example, team personnel have been essential in developing concussion prevention programs through helmet testing and engineering, Sills said. The NFL has reconstructed more than 1,500 concussions using video and engineering models, mapping more than 150 variables for each event. This has led to testing systems that classify helmet models according to injury risk.
The league has also launched educational campaigns to encourage players to opt for safer helmets, and now 98% of players wear only high-safety models, Sills said.
Football has long been criticized as a dangerous and injury-prone sport, but he believes it is within the NFL’s ability to make the game safer and more attractive. Sills believes data interoperability will continue to play a big role in this as the league continues to innovate its rules, equipment and protocols.
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