National sports data platform

The Netherlands leads the way in research into sport and exercise. That research happens in a scattered way though, on separate islands of knowledge. At the same time phones, smartwatches and other connected devices generate ever more data.

The task: design one central platform that connects every research activity around sport and exercise, and standardise the data analyses of the entire research field at the same time.

One scalable data platform, built privacy by design, with connections to existing sensors, fitness apps, smartwatches and athlete management systems.

The platform in short:

• Users gain insight into their exercise behaviour, sleep and performance through personalised dashboards, including predictions and overtraining alerts
• Researchers and coaches collect, manage, analyse and share data in one place, GDPR-proof. They run their own analyses in Jupyter notebooks using R, Python and Octave
• Data from questionnaires, sensors and other sources is combined automatically, with evidence-based questionnaires built in (RPE, OSTRC, SQUASH)
• API connections with Fitbit, Strava, Garmin and Polar

First a proof of concept to demonstrate technical feasibility. Then an MVP that produced direct feedback from end users. That feedback steered the development that followed.

Sport Data Valley aims to become the most complete data analysis platform for sport, exercise and health in the Netherlands. We remain involved in its development.

Sport Data Valley is an initiative of Sportinnovator, set up by the Sport Data Center, Leiden University, TU Delft, AISS and the University of Twente.