Building on sports medicine partnerships to elite sports and premier league football, Canon Medical Systems UK is ramping up plans to provide three specialist ‘Sports Imaging Hubs’ to athletes and their support teams at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Canon Medical UK will provide medical imaging modalities including AI-assisted CT and MRI, diagnostic ultrasound and digital radiography X-ray with full health IT connectivity to the NHS Trust supporting the event, or to preferred sports medicine clinicians overseas. The Sports Imaging Hubs will aim to provide early detection, prevention and faster rehabilitation of sports injury and surveillance. They will be located at three locations for three weeks across the Birmingham 2022 campuses to support over 4,500 athletes and their support staff.
A newly launched ‘Mobile Cardiac Laboratory’ by Professor Guido Pieles, the Institute of Sport, Exercise & Health, HCA Healthcare Ltd and Canon Medical UK will also be available to athletes at Birmingham 2022. It will provide specialised cardiac performance evaluation using ECG techniques and resting and exercise stress 4D echocardiography using Canon Medical’s ultrasound system. This helps to provide in-depth assessment of cardiac anatomy and function to identify pre-existing cardiac abnormalities and offer advice for optimal sports medicine management and follow-up.
Mark Hitchman, managing director of Canon Medical UK said: “The partnership with Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games builds on a similar relationship we had at Glasgow in 2014. This time our focus is far more on preventable imaging than pure reactive injury assessment. Understanding the way the heart works, or identifying weaknesses in cartilage or joints is so important in elite sports as our long-term research with other sporting organisations has shown. This not only safeguards the future health of elite sports people, but it can also assist with training programmes or injury rehabilitation.
“The most important element of being involved with sports events and organisations is how it can help the wider health systems in the future. A greater understanding of how the body works under pressure is giving clinicians greater insight and knowledge that can be applied to health projects more broadly. It also enables us to refine and develop specialist medical imaging applications that are then utilised by the NHS and other healthcare organisations. This is why every pixel matters to us - because continuous development of medical imaging will help transform the healthcare of the future and enable people to live longer, fuller lives.”
Ian Reid, CEO at Birmingham 2022, added: “We’re delighted to be working with Canon Medical UK as part of their partnership as our Official Imaging Supporter for Birmingham 2022 and are in no doubt that their industry-leading medical imaging technologies will help make the Birmingham 2022 next summer’s biggest sporting event. Using Canon Medical’s global expertise, the Sports Imaging Hubs will be an incredible resource for our athletes to help detect or prevent sports injuries, offering the very latest medical facilities for world-class athletes.”
