Technology and Safety in the NFL
As with any professional sport, injuries are common in the NFL. Football is a full contact sport which takes a heavy toll on athletes. One of the most common injuries seen in the NFL is a concussion, which is a brain injury caused by a hit to the head. The NFL now uses ATC spotters and technology like Microsoft Surface Pro tablets and helmet sensors to help detect and treat injuries during games.
In 2011, the NFL decided to use certified athletic trainers or ATC spotters to help NFL athletic trainers detect injuries and monitor injured players during games. These spotters are placed around the stadium and notify medical personnel on the sidelines when they notice that a player may be injured. These spotters use Surface Pro tablets to review plays that they think players were injured during. Matthew J. Matava and Simon Görtz, two Doctors of Medicine from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University, state in an article that the Microsoft Surface Pro tablets used by both ATC spotters and athletic trainers contain software that helps them assess concussions. For example, Matava and Görtz write, “Each tablet is preloaded with the X2 Biosystems ICE Concussion software (X2 Biosystems, Seattle, WA) dedicated specifically to the assessment of potentially concussed players” (2016). In other words, Surface Pro tablets in the NFL are specifically modified to help the medical personnel detect and treat injured players more efficiently.
How does it work?
ATC spotters and athletic trainers on the sidelines have access to the game broadcast and use the Surface Pro tablets to watch the game and look for possible injured players. They can rewind, fast forward, watch in slow-motion and watch from every angle caught on camera. The special software installed on the tablets helps the spotters and trainers recognize when a player may have suffered a concussion. The NFL also places sensors in the players’ helmets that measure the amount of force taken on by a hit. If a player is hit by a force larger than what is considered safe, the information is sent to the tablets, the ATC spotters can notify athletic trainers and the afflicted player can be removed from the game to be evaluated.
The Surface Pro tablets and the new helmet technology used by the NFL has helped improve player health safety by allowing both ATC spotters to quickly recognize when a player has been injured and athletic trainers to remove injured players from the field before more damage can be sustained. As Matava and Görtz write, “In use for the past three seasons, the X2 concussion tool has been a very helpful adjunct to evaluate potentially concussed players in a rapid, standardized fashion” (2016). In other words, this technology has made recognizing and dealing with concussed players faster, thus improving player safety.
A Bright Future
As time goes on and technology improves, the NFL will continue to use technology to help lower the number of injuries like concussions sustained by players during games. Whether that means installing more software to recognize injuries or placing more sensors in players’ equipment to give athletic trainers more data to analyze, technology will play a huge role in the improvement of player health and safety in the NFL.
