PhD student Hans Van Eetveld has won the JEO Award for Young Researcher in Basic Science from the European Society for Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy. His paper on “Machine learning methods in sport injury prediction and prevention: a systematic review” received this high-level recognition and showing us once again the importance of mathematics, here in particular statistics.
1. Hans, describe in a few words what your paper is about and explain some of your findings.
In this paper we give a critical overview of the current use of machine learning methods for injury prediction and prevention. We found that ML methods can be used to identify athletes at high injury risk and to detect the most important injury risk factors. Nevertheless, we also found that more effort should be put in the interpretation of the ML models, and that often the ML methods are not used in the best way, underlining the need for experts from sports medicine to collaborate more with experts from data science.
2. What was the most challenging part during your research?
As a statistician, it was sometimes difficult for me to report statistical methods and results in such a way that they are understandable for medical doctors. Therefore, it was very nice that we had an interdisciplinary team of co-authors who were of great help in reaching this goal; especially Romain Seil (Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg) and Thomas Tischer (Univ. of Rostock) urged us often to express things in less technical terms.
3. What does this award represent to you?
This award is a very nice recognition for the work of me and my colleagues. It shows that AI/ML is a hot topic in sports medicine and it motivates me to conduct further research in this field. The award also shows the importance of interdisciplinary research: my supervisor Christophe Ley and I are statisticians, while our three co-authors are medical experts.