Professor Kieran Moran started working with the UPMC Sports Surgery Clinic (UPMC-SSC) in Dublin’s Santry 12 years ago. One of Europe’s leading sports surgery clinics, it treats thousands of patients, including elite athletes, each year. Professor Brian Devitt, a specialist in Anterior Cruciate Ligament injuries, is a leading ACL surgeon in Europe.
Why did UPMC-SSC team up with the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics? Given its high throughput of patients, the clinic has access to large amounts of data concerning sports injuries and recovery. Data are only valuable when they are collected, analysed and interpreted by experts who know what they are looking for. The Insight Centre is an interdisciplinary data science research body with academics from a range of fields working with computer scientists to create meaningful datasets. Physiotherapy and sports medicine are two of the Centre’s key areas of cross-disciplinary strength.
Working with Insight Principal Investigator Kieran Moran from the School of Health and Human Performance at DCU, the Sports Surgery Clinic has used its data to create the Biomechanical Movement and Analysis Lab. Its systems help to determine better rehabilitation pathways for athletes post-surgery. Rather than a generic approach to recovery, clinicians draw on these new datasets to prescribe personalised rehabilitation designed to provide ‘biofeedback’ to patients to optimise recovery, improve muscle strength and movement, and reduce the risk of subsequent injury it the future.
The process has been so successful it is now being adopted and adapted in other clinics internationally.
The impact of this data-driven approach to therapy is measurable. For example, groin pain post-surgery has been reduced from 18 to ten weeks among SSC patients. The project has resulted in a large number of publications in the highest ranked sports medical journals and the clinic now boasts a dedicated sports medicine and rehab building, with extended biomechanics and strength assessment technologies.
‘Embedding Research in Irish Health Services’ – a 2023 Irish Health Research Forum Conference, supported by Health Research Charities Ireland – chose UPMC-SSC as their example of best practice in hospital/research collaborations.
Over the thirteen years of the Lab’s development, SSC has increased its patient numbers fourfold and its staff sixfold. The Clinic has recently become part of the UPMC International network; a global, academic medical centre based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. UPMC works closely with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of Health Sciences, which is among the top ten schools in the US to receive research funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Worldwide, UPMC has more than 92,000 team members and in the U.S., its network includes more than 40 hospitals and 800 doctors’ offices and outpatient facilities.
UPMC-SSC is now embedded in the Insight Research Ireland Centre through the establishment of the Chair of Orthopaedics and Surgical Biomechanics, a position occupied by Professor Brian Devitt. Professor Devitt spends half his time performing surgery at the Clinic and half his time engaged in research at Insight DCU.