Performance Medicine

From Research to NFL-Ready EMR in 2 Years

🎯 The Challenge

• Existing EMRs were designed for clinical settings and not optimised for sport-specific workflows with daily updates and long term return to play plans

• Athletic and medical staff manage squads—not scheduled, one-on-one appointments—requiring fast access to injury overviews, medications, rehab plans, and profile histories

• Many different personas and roles across a sporting organisation need to access various types of information about a player which previously was fragmented across multiple systems

🧐 Dedicated Research with Leading Sports Organisations

Over the initial four months a broad base of research was conducted which included:

• Collaborating with sports organisations including Chelsea FC, IRFU, and all 32 teams in the NFL to conduct 60+ in-depth interviews with practitioners such as doctors, athletic trainers, physiotherapists, psychiatrists, and nutritionists

• Performing in person and remote user testing and to gather direct insights from various experts across sports

• Compiling over 1000 pieces of valuable information in a Notion database with the ability to filter information by theme, user role, sport, or organisation in order to guide feature development

✈️ On-Site Visits for User Understanding

In addition to remote research I attended on-site visits with teams such as the New York Giants, Las Vegas Raiders, Miami Dolphins, Chelsea FC, etc., and leagues: NFL, Premier League. These trips allowed me to:

• Build trust with our league partners as well as practitioners who were apprehensive of a platform change.

• Observe workflows, challenges, and requirements firsthand in the environments practitioners were working in.

• Test different designs and iterate quickly during on-sites, the NFL Combine, and various summits.

• Follow-up testing at the Combine helped build trust with athletic trainers.

• Demonstrated implementation of feedback, establishing strong working relationships.

• Created ongoing collaboration opportunities for Kitman Labs.

🛠️ Design Process for Setting Direction of Performance Medicine

• Reviewed the completed research to understand how information should be structured for sports environments

• Identified that traditional EMR (patient-file-centric) models don’t fit the dynamic needs of sports practitioners

• Designed a three-tier hierarchical structure:

  • Squad level – high-level view across all athletes (e.g. injuries, latest notes)

  • Athlete level – full medical history and context per athlete

  • Injury level – detailed diagnostics, notes, and rehab plans for each injury

• Ensured practitioners could access and act on information where and when they needed it (e.g. adding notes, linking diagnostics or rehab plans at any level)

• Supported real-time workflows by enabling snapshot views and flexible data creation outside of scheduled appointments

👫 Leading the Design Function

Led the design function within Performance Medicine, managing a team of three designers.

• Ensured alignment, collaboration, and effective communication across the design team while leading the direction of the platform.

• Translated user insights into innovative design solutions through a collaborative process.

• Positioned design as a central element in all product decisions.

• Collaborated closely with product management and engineering teams on product roadmap and strategy.

🏆 Achievements

• Conducted comprehensive research with top sports organisations to create the first sport specific EMR.

• Gathered valuable insights from doctors, athletic therapists, and multiple other medical professionals and translated these into a revolutionary sports medicine platform.

• Led and coordinated a team of three designers to implement product areas such as medications, diagnostics, concussion tracking, cardic testing etc.

• Translated user insights into a revolutionary sports medicine platform design

Conclusion

Through dedicated research, on-site visits, and leading the design function, we successfully revolutionised sports medicine with our platform by designing and building the first sport specific EMR. More detail on some of the process and features in this platform can be found throughout my portfolio.