Thanks to everyone who responded to my appeal to canvas industry opinion on artificial intelligence (AI) in high performance sport. I received an array of questions and comments, from both practitioners and researchers all over the globe. This post shares the key themes that emanated from the discussion. Going forward, I am delighted to be engaging with Zone7 - a leader in AI application for injury risk forecasting and performance management - to discuss each of these areas further. I will be collaborating with co-founders Tal Brown and Eyal Eliakim, as well as Performance Director Rich Buchanan to dive further into each theme.

Popularised in the Brad Pitt film Moneyball, groundbreaking analytics almost saw the Oakland A's crowned the kings of baseball back in 2002. General manager Billy Beane's evidence-based, sabermetric approach allowed the small-market franchise to compete against teams with much bigger budgets by finding undervalued players through revolutionary statistical analysis. The concept sparked the adoption of more data-driven principles across a myriad of sports – with teams and coaches all trying to gain a competitive advantage – but the latest innovation may be the biggest game-changer of the lot. Invented by artificial intelligence company Zone7, the new Silicon Valley algorithm is being used by teams in the NBA, NFL and Premier League as a way to detect injury risk and recommend pre-emptive action. One of those clubs, Liverpool FC, has deployed it to great success this season in their hunt for an unprecedented quadruple, cutting the number of days players have lost to injury to 1,008 from more than 1,500 in 2020/21.

Popularised in the Brad Pitt film Moneyball, groundbreaking analytics almost saw the Oakland A's crowned the kings of baseball back in 2002. General manager Billy Beane's evidence-based, sabermetric approach allowed the small-market franchise to compete against teams with much bigger budgets by finding undervalued players through revolutionary statistical analysis. The concept sparked the adoption of more data-driven principles across a myriad of sports – with teams and coaches all trying to gain a competitive advantage – but the latest innovation may be the biggest game-changer of the lot. Invented by artificial intelligence company Zone7, the new Silicon Valley algorithm is being used by teams in the NBA, NFL and Premier League as a way to detect injury risk and recommend pre-emptive action. One of those clubs, Liverpool FC, has deployed it to great success this season in their hunt for an unprecedented quadruple, cutting the number of days players have lost to injury to 1,008 from more than 1,500 in 2020/21.

Zone7 bases its analysis on more than five million hours of performance data. While it has started pilot programs in MLB and the NHL, its focus is on global soccer, with about three dozen clients spanning Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the English Football League Championship, which is the second division below the Premier League. Its most high-profile success (that it is able to disclose) has been Getafe CF, which is currently in fifth place in Spain's La Liga despite a team wage bill in the league's bottom half. By some measures, they've reduced injuries by 65% with Zone7.

Premier League players could be 25% more susceptible to injury when football resumes because of the intense schedule, research shows. Premier League chief executive Richard Masters is "as confident as we can be" of restarting in June. Time will need to be found for the FA Cup before the 2020-21 season starts in "late August, early September". Based on Project Restart's provisional return date of 20 June, Manchester City players could face 13 games in 49 days. City have played one fewer match than the majority of Premier League clubs but these figures do not take into account the completion of the Champions League, which has the potential of adding another four games should they reach the final - if the tournament can be concluded. Research conducted by artificial intelligence platform Zone7, which specialises in injury risk forecasting and works with 35 professional football teams worldwide, shows that playing eight matches in a 30-day period increases the incidence of injury by 25% when compared with playing four to five matches in the same timeframe.

Virtus Entella is the first Italian soccer organization that will use Zone7, an artificial intelligence application for the detection and prevention of injuries and performance optimization. The football Club based in Chiavari, Italy, once again leverage the close relationship and synergy with Wylab, the first Italian sports tech incubator, to experiment with innovative technologies and solutions with the aim to improve the team performances. Zone7 is an artificial intelligence tool that crunches players performance, physiology and medical big data (tracking/GPS, bio-mechanical, athletic, sleep, saliva, blood, etc.) and enables the team staff to mitigate injuries, events that are typical of all professional sports and have huge financial and emotional costs for football clubs all over the world. The teams using Zone7 are able to identify the correlations between injuries and the performance data thus improving their players and team results. Zone7 not only notifies users (coaches and fitness trainers) – via a dedicated mobile app – of the injury risk levels for all players in the quad, but provides actionable insights on the risk factors, causes and kind of injuries and, most of all, offers recommendations to adapt the work load to the current state of health of the athletes in order to bring her/him back to the safe zone.

Zone7 announced last month it had raised $2.5 million in seed funding from a Resolute Ventures-led group, which also included Amicus Capital Partners, PLG Ventures, UpWest Labs, Dave Pell, PLG Ventures and UpWest, as well as former and current athletes, including the National Basketball Association's Kristaps Porzingis. Zone7, a 10-person startup, said Major League Baseball, professional soccer teams and several college programs are using its system, although the company declined to name the teams. However, the Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club, an Israeli pro team, has tested the technology, according to Jordi Cruyff, who was the team's sports director from 2012 to 2017. Mr. Cruyff is also a former player and one-time member of some of the biggest teams in the sport, including FC Barcelona and Manchester United Football Club. With Maccabi, Mr. Cruyff said he would receive daily alerts from Zone7 that certain players were at high risk.