The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare will on Friday reveal its plans to roll out an online platform, which would allow amateur players to enter all the details and circumstances surrounding injuries.

The aim of the program is to collect data, which would inform injury prevention and management approaches across Australia, as no such statistics exist on a national level.

A number of Canberra's soccer teams are in discussions about joining the Australia-first study and could soon be providing information to help experts make decisions about risks and benefits of participation in sports.

The pilot is planned to be rolled out by mid-2022 to find out if it's viable to collect data at a community sport level and how to do so.

AIHW spokesperson Dr Adrian Webster said they hoped to lock in the Canberra soccer clubs in coming weeks to the program.

"The potential value of this type of data is enormous," he said.

"We've got a good handle on stuff that goes on in hospitals for the more severe end of things, but it's extremely hard to get any information really at the national level on the types of injuries people experience playing sport.

"So there's a gap in the information, particularly at that kind of non-professional end. We're hoping to bridge that gap.

"A barrier to improving sports injury is good data on what's going on, and the ability to put in place an intervention and monitor the impact. Is it working? Is it not working? That's what we're hoping to achieve."

MORE IN SPORT:

The pilot makes up part of the AIHW's - in partnership with Sport Australia and the AIS - national sports injury data strategy draft consultation outlining how a database could be developed.

In additional to the pilot, the AIHW is also talking with sports organisations, health-care providers, insurers and government agencies to understand what sports injury data was being collected.

Dr Webster said the AIHW were under no allusions about how hard it may be to try and gather the data nation wide.

"We're not naive or blind to the fact that it could be a wickedly difficult challenge," he said.

"It's a pretty grand endeavour to try and gather usable, robust data, in an ongoing way from the millions of people that are playing sports ever week, and unfortunately, getting injured. So that's why we're taking a bit of a slow and careful approach to this."

The pilot and strategy coincide with new data from the AIHW which revealed the potential economic savings from improving injury prevention, with $746 million spent each year on managing relatively severe injuries linked to inadequate injury prevention and management during physical activity in 2018-19.

The first stage of the AIHW's economics of sports injury and participation also revealed the cost to the country's health system without physical activity. It suggested that conditions associated with physical inactivity cost the health system $968 million in 2018-19.

"Australia is a sporting nation and participation in sport improves our health and wellbeing," Dr Webster said.

"However, these benefits are often lessened as a result of injuries that could either have been prevented or better managed."

Feedback on the proposed data strategy can be emailed to injury2@aihw.gov.au until 18 April 2022.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: