Research project improves athletic results

gallery

The Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education (CHIME) is developing heath informatics software and systems to help British athletes train for the 2012 London Olympics.

CHIME students of MSc Health Informatics based out of University College London (UCL) are participating in the Sensing for Sport and Managed Exercise (SESAME) project.

Dr Dipak Kalra, clinical senior lecturer at UCL told IT PRO that SESAME is a UK-wide programme involving various academic partners in developing ways of capturing performance data to refine athletic coaching techniques and individual performance at the same time as advancing knowledge of the application of computer science in sports.

"SESAME combines high-tech multimedia sensor technology with our expertise in electronic health record data manipulation to produce graphs, trends and analyses of an athlete's performance," he said.

For example, another SESAME partner, the University of Wales, specialises in 3D video imaging and is using sensors and cameras placed around an athletics track to give coaches an almost real-time view of their athlete's physical performance.

"In future we'd like to be able to take that information and feed it into the electronic health data standards we develop to immediately tell the coach that was the athlete's best performance for three month for instance and according to certain parameters like stride length, angles of take off and so on, in addition to more traditional measurements of times, heights and distances," Karla said.

As one of the SESAME project partners, CHIME students enrolled on the MSc will have the opportunity to learn about SESAME through two new course modules: Shared Care & Electronic Healthcare Records and Health Knowledge Management & Decision Support Systems.

Karla added: "The new modules will use the methodology, processes and results of the SESAME project to demonstrate relevant theory, leveraging fifteen years of know-how in electronic health records to help build the core SESAME athlete training record, integrate body sensors and video data captured during training sessions. This will also provide students with a valuable starting point for dissertations."

The four-year SESAME initiative is due to run until 2010 and has received nearly £930,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the UK's main research funding body in engineering and the physical sciences.

In delivering the programme, UCL has partnered with the Royal Veterinary College, the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff and Cambridge University.

Although focused on athletics in time for the 2012 Olympics to be held in London, Karla added the SESAME technical approach and its solutions would be applicable to a wider range of training and health care scenarios. These include the rehabilitation of patients following surgery, stroke or injury and support for people with physical disabilities.

Email to a friend

Print this page