Sparta Science: Predicting Musculoskeletal Injury Risk with Force Plate Machine Learning™ on AWS

Guest post by Greg Olsen – Chief Technology Officer, Sparta Science and Dhawal Patel, Sr. Startup Solutions Architect, AWS

Sparta Science delivers a movement health solution to organizations who want to protect their most valuable resource – people. Elite sports teams, military units, performance and rehabilitation businesses, occupational health providers, and employers use Sparta Science’s Movement Health Platform (SMHP) to assess injury risk and performance, and to guide improvements in musculoskeletal health. In a nutshell, the Sparta System is based on following elements:

• Scanning: Users execute simple movement tests in a few minutes on a high-fidelity force plate that captures real-time ground reaction forces.
• Assessment: Through a combination of machine learning models and bio-mechanical analyses, the time series data is transformed into a set of movement health metrics, and injury risk and performance scores.
• Guidance: Individualized activity and exercise recommendations are generated based on the movement metrics and risk and performance scores.
• Information Management: Scanned data and results are uploaded to a cloud application where individuals manage their MSK health over time and where organizations can manage the health of their workforce.

Sparta Science has been collecting and assessing ground reaction force time series data for over a decade from 80k+ unique individuals and from a variety of different population groups (e.g., sport & position, military function etc.). In conjunction with this time series data, we’ve also been collecting injury event, performance measurement, exposure, and exercise activity data. Through the combination of accumulated data, advance machine learning techniques, and domain knowledge brought from a team that includes professional training and medical expertise, Sparta Science is able to deliver a uniquely powerful system for movement health. Delivering this system, however, presented a daunting set challenges for a small company that led us to AWS….

Click here to read the full post on the Amazon Web Services blog