Understanding the impact of concussions and injuries in community sport will be easier with the release of new software available to Canberra sporting clubs.
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The software will allow Sports Medicine Australia to record and collate data about injuries as well as monitor concussion rates in the ACT.
This will result in improved care for athletes and will prevent potentially catastrophic side-effects of returning a concussed athlete to training or competition too early.
Concussed athletes will also be invited to participate in a study conducted by Dr Lisa Elkington, a PHD student at the University of Canberra, who is undertaking a project on concussion management.
Elkington said while concussion was being taken more seriously in professional sporting codes such as the NRL and the AFL, community sport was lagging behind.
"Concussion is quite high profile in sport at the moment and in the professional setting, but I think it's easy for concussions to be missed at the community level," Elkington said. "It's quite a difficult condition to test and manage.
"There's no one test that you can do and no imaging studies that definitively say that someone is concussed."
Elkington will focus on improving the balance testing part of the assessment to detect concussions.
An athlete's clinical history and cognitive and memory function are also key symptoms in severe head trauma.
Vice-president of Sports Medicine Australia ACT, Dr Robert Reed, said 90 per cent of athletes who suffered a concussion did not get knocked out.
"The program allows us to capture data from sports for anything from a sprained ankle to a concussion," Reed said.
"It's really important data to capture because we don't really know the number of injuries that happen in sport.
"We can do much more with the data and make it safer for everyone to play sport."
ACT Sports Minister Shane Rattenbury said the data could help to reduce the financial burden on the health sector in the ACT.
"This program offers a real opportunity for clubs in the ACT to participate in an important study, but to also give data back to improve the safety of their own players," Rattenbury said.
The software is free for sporting clubs to use. For more information, contact SMA-ACT executive officer Trish Donoghue on trish.donoghue@sma.org.au
