Sep 16, 2015New Sports Medicine App For Athletic Trainers
A new app designed to assist physicians and athletic trainers from the Cleveland Clinic is also available for anyone to consult. The app offers guidelines for emergencies, protocols for handling common sports medicine situations, access to information for diagnosing and treating sports injuries, and a search function that makes it easy to locate information quickly.
The app, titled Sideline Guidelines, was the brainchild of Kurt Spindler, MD, Vice Chairman of Research at Cleveland Clinic’s Orthopaedic & Rheumatologic Institute, who came up with the idea while he was Head Team Physician and Vice Chair of Orthopedics at Vanderbilt University.
“This app is a game-changer for medical professionals and athletes,” Spindler, who is also director of Orthopaedic Clinical Outcomes and the academic director of Cleveland Clinic Sports Health, said in a press release. “Never before have we had this information at our fingertips via the phone app to help diagnose and treat athletes.”
According to an article on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s website, he received help from team physicians for the city’s three professional sports teams, experts from several colleges, and specialists and programmers within the Cleveland Clinic.
“The creation of this app took hundreds of medical man hours and programming,” Spindler said. “There’s not one of us who knows everything in that app. It’s impossible.”
Athletes and parents can also benefit from consulting the app, according to Spindler, although it won’t replace proper care from sports medicine professionals. “It’s still up to the trainer or physician to say this is how you interpret this,” he said.
Spindler says he welcomes suggestions for improving the app. Work is already progressing on an updated version for next year, including pictures to show patients what is happening in their bodies.