The new Institute will shift the traditional emphasis of research into sports injury - which is predominantly adult-centric and based upon treatment – by concentrating on younger athletes, 11-18 years old, and will focus on prevention rather than cure.
The institute will develop new technologies to monitor and analyse the individual factors that currently lead to youth sports injuries and offer practical solutions for safer sports practices, focusing on safety for lifelong health, rather than performance.
‘Sport-related injury, particularly concussion, have rapidly risen to the top of under-reported and under-researched issues with lifelong consequences for both individual athletes and society. This partnership, and the new Institute, will combine the best of science, medicine and technology to deliver research that can have a real-world and measurable impact on young people’s lives.’ Prof Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford
The Institute will form part of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (Department of Engineering Science) - which has a 15-year track-record of combining medicine and technology to achieve adoption and healthcare impact - and will draw on leading expertise across the medical sciences, including clinical neurosciences, orthopaedics, and population health, as well as Oxford’s Big Data Institute.