Development and Evaluation of a Custom Mobile Application for Prospective Injury and Exposure Monitoring

Advancement in information technology have created opportunities for the use of mobile applications (app) for activity monitoring. This study aims to observe the feasibility of using mobile app for monitoring ACL injuries during dynamic sporting activities in a two-year prospective cohort study. This study developed a bespoke mobile app, to be used by the participants as a weekly-basis monitoring platform. 104 injuryfree participants were monitored for one-season. Participant’s compliance in reporting their activities and/or injury each week was assessed. Participants’ anticipated time of exposure was declared upon installation of the app. The incoming data from the app was stored in an allocated web server and checked weekly by the researcher. At the end of the season, 93 participants were analyzed. Forty-seven participants completed the monitoring requirement of 36 weeks, while thirteen comply <4 weeks. The highest declared weekly exposure was 20 hours (n=3) and the lowest was 2 (n=4). Sixteen participants declared 6 hours of exposure per week. Direct application of mobile app in monitoring injury still faces many hurdles. In order to result in optimal participant compliance, findings from this study shows that total reliance on the mobile app alone may not be sufficient. Keywords— injury monitoring, ACL injury risk, mobile app