These days, there's no shortage of data. But how can we use what we've got to inform measurable health interventions that make a real impact?
Movement health as a key performance indicator
As musculoskeletal injuries (MSKI) continue to rise, movement health is increasingly recognized as a key performance indicator (KPI) in health and wellness – providing useful information about a person’s overall wellbeing and their ability to engage in activities relevant for work, play and athletic performance. For all its usefulness, though, movement health has remained difficult to track at both an individual and group level.
Accurately interpreting and (meaningfully reporting on) fitness data requires a lot of information from a range of factors – lifestyle, activity norms, age, weight, sleep and stress, just to name a few. Even when surveys and self-reports capture this information, the personalized nuances of movement health, physical limitations and movement quality often go missed.
The way we move (or our “movement quality”) is a signaling device that our bodies use to tell us whether something is OK, or not. Before we can hope to make a dent in the growing MSK problem, we must first learn to understand the movement information we’re already collecting to help identify issues at the source, and provide meaningful recommendations that can make a real impact.
But how do we get there?
Where we are now
Existing technologies across fitness and high-performance typically assess and report, stopping short of interpreting and making recommendations from the data collected. Wearables, fitness technologies and performance platforms are missing the opportunity to connect the data they collect with personalized insights and evidence-based action at scale.
The existing approach to reporting metrics has worked for audiences that rely on a 1-1 deployment model and employ highly specialized and trained individuals (i.e. professional athletes, personal trainers, elite military personnel). To improve movement health outcomes for everyday people, there’s an onus on platforms to do more with their data.
Where we need to go
For Individuals
General solutions solve general problems. Specific solutions solve specific problems.
Qualitative movement information, whether collected through surveys, self-assessments or computer vision, needs to be used to create intelligent and personalized recommendations that understand the needs of that individual and their current movement health.
Connecting assessment data to recommended movement is only valuable if a proven and monitored change is reported. A new era of movement health will require personal insights for everyday individuals, a health score that is relevant both for them and the organization providing it, and effective recommendations for making meaningful improvement to that score. This will enable individuals to see change over time and connect that positive change to the recommended movements they’ve been doing.
"Connecting assessment data to recommended movement is only valuable if a proven and monitored change is reported"
For Organizations
At the organizational level, platforms managing many humans or athletes need the ability to track and segment groups of individuals based on the type of movement limitation being reported (through assessments). Understanding – and therefore personalizing – someone’s movement is necessary to report and share what is or isn’t working for each individual.
MSK health requires a new way to monitor and provide valuable metrics that positively impact movement health. It starts with a numerical score, but the need runs deeper.
MSK insurers, workplace health technologies, fitness platforms and related industries need to understand the root cause of existing limitations. From there, they may track changes to those limitations in order to adapt the exercises or health interventions their demographics are engaging in over time.
It seems simple and to the point, but innovating a new model – where data is used appropriately to make meaningful health interventions for all individuals – requires forward-thinking action, not just fancy layouts and new color schemes on existing reporting tables.
As new companies and platforms emerge, the ones who succeed will be those who understand this and are best able to connect individual and group movement to specific and timely recommendations.
What we're doing about it
We created movr Analyze to help individuals and groups monitor movement health as a KPI. It is a stand-alone software reporting on the unique, data-driven insights that monitor change in the movement health of participants pre and post-recommendations (or intervention) provided by movr. We highlight the root cause of movement limitation and lay it out in simple reporting functionality.
Analyze provides a layer of information within the complex web of well-being. We keep it simple, personalized and relevant to both the individual and the organization. With Analyze, tracking movement health as a KPI is actually connected to action.
movr is an assessment-based movement health technology company. Our goal is to help measurably improve musculoskeletal health with innovative technology solutions within an ever-changing health space.
Interested in learning more? Reach out here.