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Cleveland Clinic app helps trainers assess, manage sports injuries

Cleveland Clinic's Sideline Guidelines contains medical information and branching logic to help trainers and other medical professionals diagnose sports injuries on the sidelines, plan training schedules and decide when an athlete is medically able to return to play.

After a couple of months under the radar, the Cleveland Clinic this week is publicizing a mobile app to help sports medicine professionals, including athletic trainers, assess player injuries on the spot.

Called Sideline Guidelines, the app hit iTunes July 9. It currently is available only for Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, not Android devices.

Sideline Guidelines contains easily accessible medical information and branching logic to help trainers and other medical professionals diagnose sports injuries on the sidelines, plan training schedules and decide when an athlete is medically able to return to play.

“Never before have we had this information at our fingertips via the phone app to help diagnose and treat athletes,” said the app’s creator, Dr. Kurt Spindler, academic director of Cleveland Clinic Sports Health and vice chairman of research at the institution’s Orthopaedic & Rheumatologic Institute

Spindler had help building content from specialists in cardiovascular disease, neurology, gastrointestinal medicine, otolaryngology, dermatology, dentistry and emergency medicine Cleveland Clinic and other academic medical centers across the country. Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic in 2014, he spent 23 years as head team physician, director of sports medicine, and vice chairman of orthopaedics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

While Spindler called Sideline Guidelines “a game-changer for medical professionals and athletes,” it certainly is not the first mobile app for athletic trainers. Last year, iMedicalApps said that an app called Trainer Tool “changes the game” (note the theme) for trainers, though that product is more for injury documentation and patient management, plus it apparently contains a security flaw.

Several apps already exist for assessing sports-related concussions and for managing athlete rehabilitation. Notably, Medical iRehab has a series of injury-specific mobile apps. Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center’s Ironman Sports Medicine Institute also offers an app for assessing and preventing athletic injuries.

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