Sparta Science Announces Partnership with OrthoSport Victoria, La Trobe University, to Examine Movement Signatures in ACL Reconstruction

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 8, 2023 -- Sparta Science, the leading Movement Health intelligence company, announced today it is partnering with OrthoSport Victoria and La Trobe University to improve understanding of movement health assessment in clinical populations. This research is specifically interested in the unique movement signatures of patients with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. OrthoSport Victoria, with the support of La Trobe University researchers, is deploying Sparta Science’s Movement Health Platform (MHP) to help gather movement health biomarkers based on ground reaction forces to investigate the variability and meaningful change thresholds for improved clinical decision-making.

"ACL surgery is one of the most common, yet outcomes vary widely," said Dr. Phil Wagner, CEO of Sparta Science. "We are happy the MHP provides a scalable platform for La Trobe and OrthoSport Victoria’s research to ultimately improve post-ACL outcomes with data-based care decisions."

ACL injuries continue to be among the most common orthopedic injuries within athletic populations. There is a growing interest in the development of objective clinical measures to determine progress post-ACL surgery, as a large portion of patients do not return to activity at pre-injury level. The development of noninvasive and efficient objective testing would allow a better functional capacity evaluation and optimization of the return to activity pathway. Using the MHP, the team hopes to create a unique database that better categorizes this population. This information, alongside variability and meaningful change thresholds, will also be compared with existing assessments to determine whether ground reaction force metrics can help enhance current rehabilitation design and post-surgical progression.

The development of rapid, mobile, noninvasive testing and more objective and sensitive biomarkers could be scaled to help meet the increasing clinical demands of practitioners across this sector.