Pac-12 Health Analytics Program: An Innovative Approach to Health Care Operations, Data Analytics, and Clinical...

The objective of this study was to describe the purpose, methods, and effects of the Pac-12 Health Analytics Program (HAP) approach on sports medicine informatics, research, analytics, and health care operations. Sports injury-surveillance initiatives have been supporting the clinical research community in sports medicine for nearly 4 decades. Whereas the initial systems tracked only a few sports, current surveillance programs have expanded to include entire professional and elite athlete organizations, providing important statistics on sports injury risk management. The HAP is a conference-wide data-sharing and-analytics program. It collects authorized, deidentified clinical data, encompassing multiple domains of sports medicine injury management, including sports injuries and illnesses, concussions, risk exposure, and COVID-19 testing elements. The HAP provides clinicians with access to curated data to inform evidence-based practice and support local health care operations with respect to emerging sports injury trends. The HAP supplies approved research groups with access to a data repository that describes a homogeneous, elite intercollegiate athlete sample, thereby supporting nonresearch clinical initiatives as well as contributions to peer-reviewed research that can improve the health and well-being of Pac-12 student-athletes. The HAP is a novel approach to sports injury epidemiology and surveillance that has allowed the Pac-12 Conference to meet larger objectives regarding improving the student-athlete experience and clinical research among its member schools. Data quality control has improved the accuracy of the data and value to clinical athletic trainers within the conference. Curated dashboards displaying aggregated project data offer clinicians data-driven decision-making tools that help inform sports injury risk management. As of 2021, the HAP had supported more than 3 dozen data requests. These investigations have resulted in numerous peer-reviewed research contributions to the sports medicine community with findings that have great potential to improve the health and well-being of Pac-12 student-athletes.