Ankle Injuries in Football – the power of big data.

A few months ago while we were installing Benchmark54 at an English Premier League Club one the medical staff questioned the usefulness of injury audit. He told me that ‘no two ankle injuries are the same’ and that trying to audit injury data was, in his opinion, of limited use, time consuming and unnecessary.

It reminded me to the passage in Ben Goldacre’s Book – Bad Science – where he explains the story of the Cochrane Collaboration Logo . By relying on personal experience solely to guide our treatment choices rather than the published evidence we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the Obstetricians cited in the Cochrane example. (more…)