UH Sports Innovation Unleashes Technology to Promote Active and Healthy Lifestyles

Sports are an American way of life. And they’re becoming even more so, both among kids and teens on school sports teams and among adults enjoying the many options for staying active and fit. In 2024, the Sports & Fitness Industry Association reported that the physical activity participation rate for active Americans reached 80%. That means there were 247.1 million Americans who participated in at least one physical activity in 2024 -- an increase of 25.4 million more active Americans per year since 2019. Participation in youth and teen team sports is also up, recently hitting its highest number in nearly 10 years.

‌We know that every one of these athletes wants to perform at his or her best, no matter their age or circumstances, whether in a local 5K race, a spirited game of pickleball with friends or a fall football game under the Friday night lights. And they want to know what they can do to avoid injury, either in a game or match or as a “weekend warrior." And if an injury does occur, they want the best possible sports medicine care, personally tailored to help them heal and get them back in the game.

That’s a tall order, but at University Hospitals, we’re committed to helping athletes and all active people achieve just that. Our state-of-the-art UH Drusinsky Sports Medicine Institute is dedicated to helping every athlete compete and thrive, no matter their ability – from peewee to pro.

It serves thousands of athletes young and old across Northeast Ohio. And our new UH Haslam Sports Innovation Center, led by Executive Director James Voos, MD, Jack and Mary Herrick Distinguished Chair in Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine and Head Team Physician for the Cleveland Browns, complements and shares this vision, while harnessing the growing power of innovation in the sports medicine world. Its broad goals include creating stronger, healthier athletes and communities, while establishing a pipeline for developing new sports medicine technologies, with sustainable program funding.

‌To do this, we’re bringing the brightest minds together across sports, healthcare and technology to re-imagine what’s possible, both from within UH and outside our institution. UH Ventures, the innovation and commercialization arm of University Hospitals, is an important partner, as are a business advisory board and medical advisory board with UH and outside experts.

Through these collaborations, we’re making strategic investments in start-ups and other entities poised to make a real difference for athletes and the field of sports medicine.

Many of these companies were recently featured during SportsLand™, a growing sports innovation summit hosted by UH Ventures and the UH Haslam Sports Innovation Center. Through a dynamic pitch competition, attendees saw firsthand how emerging technologies are shaping the future of athlete health, performance, and recovery — reinforcing UH’s role as a leader in sports innovation.

What does this mean specifically? It’s helpful to take a moment to consider just what we mean by sports innovation. The best example may be the Fitbit, which countless millions use to track and improve their physical performance. Along these same lines, the UH Haslam Center is partnering with Notus Labs, a local Northeast Ohio company, which is developing a wearable skin sensor for measuring and then displaying core body temperature in an easy-to-read way. Rising core body temperature is an important factor in knowing when to stop exercising to avoid injury, but up to this point, it’s been difficult to measure on the go. Another “wearable” investment is in UGen, which is working on a device to give feedback on whether you’re doing physical therapy exercises correctly. This could be enormously helpful to improve therapy outcomes for patients, but also beneficial for those who’ve run out of insurance coverage for physical therapy or who can’t make it to in-person PT appointments. Along more traditional lines is Reparel, a sleeve to support an injured elbow, knee or ankle. Through its fabric and design, it helps reduce swelling and promotes healing, and we’re now using them with our patients at UH.

Another strong line of investment for the UH Haslam Center for Sports Innovation is in technology the sports medicine patient will never see – but will benefit from nonetheless.

Lazurite’s wireless camera system, which we’ve purchased at UH, enhances patient safety by providing clarity and precision for surgical visualization, while reducing the risk of cable-related burns and fires. This technology is now widely used in UH operating rooms. We’ve also invested in Collamedix, Inc., a Cleveland-based biotech company with many UH ties that is developing medical devices using natural collagen threads. Their innovative technology promises better solutions for soft tissue support and repairs, including faster healing. Another in this category is OsteoCentric Technologies, which has developed a surgical screw that has its roots in aviation. It’s designed to preserve bone architecture and stabilize bone implants – something of great importance to the millions of Americans who undergo bone implant surgeries like hip or knee replacement each year. It’s shown to decrease both recovery time and pain. Finally, to keep our sports medicine team (and others) working at their best, we’ve invested in KyurMD. It’s a fluid-repellant, temperature-regulating clothing brand designed to enhance caregiver performance in the same way “tactical” clothing works for an athlete – a far cry from traditional scrubs.

How will we tell whether these sports innovation investments are making a difference for athletes and other active people? In a word, testing – and more testing. Through its collaboration with the UH Drusinsky Sports Medicine Institute, the UH Haslam Center serves more than 75 schools and club partner organization across Northeast Ohio. We’ve also invested in T3, a local training facility that offers sports-focused athletic programs for people of all ages and abilities. Through these relationships, students, families, athletes and patients can provide real-time feedback on whether the innovations are working. We like to think of it as a living lab, with start-ups able to make adjustments in almost real time based on user input.

‌Ultimately, it’s that close connection to our community -- and its many athletes of all types and abilities – that will help us all succeed together. As the healthcare providers for both the Cleveland Browns and literally thousands of young athletes across Northeast Ohio, we at UH see up close what the sports medicine issues are.

We have “feet in the grass,” on the field of play, as Dr. Voos says.

By taking that valuable insight and partnering with our own basic scientists and others – identifying what we can develop ourselves while collaborating with other start-ups who’ve begun additional work – we’re in a great position to convene and concentrate expertise to make sports and fitness activities better and safer for everyone. We’re happy to be the catalyst that brings these two worlds together.

‌The potential benefits are enormous. As in previous generations, people today want to live longer. But at this moment in time, the focus is increasingly on maximizing the number of years in your life that are healthy years, not just accumulating birthdays.

Through the UH Haslam Center for Sports Innovation, we’re uniquely poised to help make this happen. By promoting and enabling an active lifestyle, we know we can give people the tools for a longer – and healthier – life. That’s healthcare at its finest.