New technologies in sports: from injury prevention to sports management

Athletes are under great pressure to consistently deliver top performance. Technological aids are increasingly being used to support them in this. Artificial intelligence (AI) in particular shows great potential to change sports in the long term and effectively support athletes.

In an interview with MEDICA-tradefair.com and at MEDICA 2024, Prof. Sascha L. Schmidt provides insights into the future of sports and the extent to which AI, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT) will change the sports of the future.

Prof. Schmidt, which technological advances do you think will have the biggest impact on athletes in the coming years?

Prof. Sascha L. Schmidt: With the spread of ChatGPT, it has become clear that we are in the middle of a data revolution. Generative artificial intelligence will not only significantly change our lives, but also sports in the future. This will affect athletes in all areas. This includes how they practice their sports, how they train, how they rehabilitate and how they prevent injuries. This in turn has numerous implications for the management of sports.

How could AI and machine learning change the way sports organizations support and manage their athletes?

Schmidt: We already have a 360-degree view of athletes today, in other words a "transparent athlete". This means that we are not only able to optimize training, but also to prepare athletes ideally for their competition. This includes everything from managing sleeping habits to nutrition and psychological support.

We are close to being able to create digital twins of athletes to model all kinds of competition and training scenarios. These enable us to work with prediction models so that we can calculate probabilities of how various stresses will affect athletes. It can be assumed that the use of digital twins will take training management and injury prevention to a new level.

AI and machine learning will also enable productivity gains of around 25 percent in sports management, just like in other industries. In principle, any form of repetitive routine activity can be performed better, faster and more efficiently using artificial intelligence, even in sports.

How can personalized approaches in sports improve the prevention and rehabilitation of injuries?

Schmidt: Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach in sports medicine. But the more individualized I can make the measures, the more efficient they are in execution. We experience this not only in training, which can be precisely tailored to the physical and mental condition of the athletes, but also in rehabilitation.

Depending on the degree of injury, very individual load control can be used to start building up and stabilization exercises at an early stage. This was not possible in the past, when rehabilitation was basically standardized per injury pattern with proven measures. Nowadays, it is possible to design rehab in a much more sophisticated way and tailor it to the individual needs of the athletes.

How could changes in sporting competitions such as the Olympic Games affect the demands on sports medicine?

Schmidt: The exciting question is which new technologies or which technical support will be permitted. Technologies are increasingly moving into the body and are no longer visible from the outside. At the World Marathon Championships in Doha, for example, the first athletes swallowed capsules with microprocessors that could be used to determine their core body temperature in real time at any time. As a prophylactic measure, participants who were in the risk zone in terms of their health could also be brought to a stop. However, the approval of externally invisible technical aids is also associated with new requirements for the prevention of so-called "tech doping".

You will be giving a presentation at MEDICA 2024 as part of the MEDICA MEDICINE + SPORTS CONFERENCE. What will be the focus?

Schmidt: I will give an outlook on the future of sports and illustrate the extent to which new technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things and many more will change sports. My focus will always be on athletes, sports consumers and the management of sports. I will bring along numerous examples that show how technologies are already influencing and changing competitions today. My presentation will be more about the big picture of sports and the implications for sports medicine.