Artificial Intelligence to Predict Sports Injuries

nakhla writes "MSNBC.com is running a story on how an Italian soccer team is using artificial intelligence to predict sports injuries. The team is working with Computer Associates to develop neural network technology that can be combined with daily tests of the athletes to determine patterns which occur right before a player gets injured. Of course, one has to assume that it wouldn't be able to predict a player getting kicked in the head in the middle of the game, resulting in a concussion." I was wondering how to tie a World Cup story into Slashdot. Congratulations to Senegal.

Comments

preventative medicine

[happyclam]

One thing that everyone seems to be missing is that being able to predict injuries implies the ability to prevent them. Not through inaction but rather through preventative medicine such as physical therapy to strengthen certain muscles around a particularly dodgy ligament or something.

Such AI would also be useful in correcting improper training--if someone is slowly degrading their ankle/rotator cuff/lower vertebrae/what have you by doing something slightly wrong, such tests and analysis could predict the injury before it happens, allowing the coach/trainer to stop the athlete from doing that bad thing any more.

Source Code Excerpt

[apg]

Here's a portion of the AI code that was leaked:

if (player.runWith == "scissors") {
player.injury.type = "puncture wound";
}
else if (player.christmasGift = "Red Rider BB Gun") {
alert("You'll shoot your eye out.");
}