In June of 2017, USA Hockey’s Player Safety department asked the Pacific District to test an injury reporting and data management system. After thorough vetting of several vendors, USA Hockey selected Players Health for further, real-time evaluation. The Pacific District then identified NAHA, and specifically the Vegas Jr.
Golden Knights program, as an ideal, manageable test market for this pilot program. It is an honor for the Pacific District and for NAHA to be selected to pilot this cutting-edge program for further consideration by USA Hockey.
USA Hockey is committed to constantly furthering player safety for all its member athletes. One area of focus is concussion management and safe return to play for concussed athletes; another area of focus is injury management and tracking. Since the Pacific District implemented the first district-wide concussion protocol, managing the pilot for an injury tracking and data management system is a natural partnership. This pilot program will provide valuable information to USA Hockey about the potential for injury management of its own athletes, continuing to make the game safer for all of our members.
The Players Health software platform is a state-of-the-art, comprehensive injury management program, but the pilot will only be focused on incidents of concussion. To ensure a successful test pilot, the system needs to be evaluated by a small group of users across a diverse representation of a hockey affiliate organization. That is what makes NAHA ideal for this project. The teams participating in the pilot will be Squirt A through the Midget and High School divisions.
The parent/guardian is only responsible for setting up the athlete profile in the system. They are not responsible for inputting information regarding injuries. The athlete profile is simple to create, and technical support is available from Player’s Health.
The team managers will be the only people inputting injury data into the system. Team managers will have in- person training the first weekend of December. Kendell Galor, NAHA’s Concussion Protocol Coordinator, will be available to assist and will be closely monitoring every incident of concussion.
Coaches will not be doing any input in the system. Coaches will be able to view HIPAA compliant data for their team members only.
The Player’s Health platform is completely HIPAA compliant and conforms with all industry standards. Player’s Health is built in compliance with both IBM Cloud and the Google HIPAA Cloud. The infrastructure of the Google HIPAA Cloud is a secure, data-encrypted, end-to-end process model. Certificates of industry compliance are available from Player’s Health if requested.
There is a limited number of system administrators with access to the data entered into the system. There will be no reason to share data outside of the system; any analysis will be done by this small group and solely for the purposes of evaluating the usability of the system.
This pilot program is very important to the future potential of data management regarding athlete injuries, rehabilitation and safe return to play for USA Hockey’s members. The expected outcome is a comprehensive report that details the usability of the system at each age and skill level, and from the perspective of each user
- from the parent, coach, manager, trainer and program administrator. We look forward to sharing the results with your affiliate and throughout USA Hockey in the summer of 2018. In advance, we appreciate your support and participation in this program.