The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology, and Podium Analytics came together again for their annual Roundtable Meeting at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, in Oxford. This yearly gathering provides a successful forum for both teams to showcase our ongoing projects, engage in collective discussions, and share insights from our respective work. One of the main aims of the collaboration between the Podium Institute and Podium Analytics is to help advance the field of sports injury prevention, and the Roundtable serves as a valuable opportunity to assess progress, identify challenges, and refine strategies towards achieving our shared mission.

After a warm welcome from our director Professor Constantin Coussios OBE FREng FMedSci, the day kicked off with presentations from both teams. The key topics presented included Sports Exertion and Return to play; Musculoskeletal Research (wrist, hip and ACL); Novel approaches to women’s health within the context of sports; Computer vision analysis; and advances in Personal Protective Equipment.

All the Podium Institute doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers had the opportunity to present and share updates from their current projects with the common purpose of developing innovative technologies to monitor, analyse and prevent sport injury.

Led by CEO Andy Hunt, the Podium Analytics’ team presented their ongoing initiatives, and contributed to each session with insightful presentations on areas such as child development, growth and maturation, neurocognitive testing, mental health, injury surveillance, and government perspectives on sports safety.

The last session of the day, dedicated to Neuro research, included informative presentations on static and mobile brain imaging, and Prof Constantin Coussios rounded up the session with a discussion on the challenges that multimodal project implementation can pose.

Each session concluded with an open discussion, allowing general participation from both our organisations, and the aim was to address the following key questions:

• What additional technology, biomarkers and surveillance tools are needed in order to optimise athlete readiness and graduated return to action?  
• What are the key gaps in MSK injury prevention, detection & rehabilitation and how can we meaningfully engage some of the major sports?
• How can these projects be scaled up and democratised for the community and youth sport?
• What do we aim to demonstrate and how can these findings help influence policy and be reduced to practice?

Despite the cold January weather, we had full attendance, and participants widely praised the positive atmosphere of the day, describing our Roundtable 2025 as a ‘highly collaborative and productive day’.

Thank you all who attended and we look forward to our next joint event.