Dimension Data, unveiled its health and wellness mobile app at the annual training camp of Africa\u2019s professional cycling team, Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka.<\/p>\n
Called Phila, which means \u2018to live\u2019 in Nguni, the app was custom designed to Team Dimension Data\u2019s specific requirements.<\/p>\n
The app tracks the daily physical and mental performance of the team\u2019s 39 World Tour and Continental riders located in 10 countries.<\/p>\n
Data collected from the team includes geographical location and time zones, quality and quantity of sleep, response to training, muscle soreness, as well as mood, motivation, and stress levels.<\/p>\n
Developed by Dimension Data\u2019s Digital Practice in partnership with Team Dimension Data\u2019s riders, and Australia-based MIK Health, Phila is also a communication and data-sharing management tool for the team.<\/p>\n
Every day, Phila prompts the riders to complete an assessment via their mobile device.<\/p>\n
The information is correlated with existing training data captured by the team\u2019s TrainingPeaks application, and is used to monitor training performance alongside overall health and wellness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was crucial that we designed an app which was easy to use 365 days a year, and riders could upload their assessment responses in two to three minutes,\u201d explains Dr Carol Austin, Head of Performance Sport and Medical for Team Dimension Data.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal was to keep the questions to a minimum, but extract the maximum data to identify any factors that could jeopardise our rider\u2019s ability to train \u2013 even weather conditions and equipment issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to the riders being geographically distributed, they\u2019re often in different cycles of racing, training, and resting. It\u2019s difficult for riders, coaches, doctors, and performance staff to stay in constant communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cPhila is a simple way to capture key information and share it with the team\u2019s support staff, who can respond immediately to injuries or illness and adapt rider racing and training schedules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott Gibson, Dimension Data\u2019s Group Executive \u2013 Digital Practice said, \u201cThe health application is just one component of the collection mechanism for critical data that we\u2019ll feed into the analytics platform we\u2019re building for Team Dimension Data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis data will be enhanced with additional datasets, and the implementation of a machine learning solution together with predictive analytics to improve team planning and management performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dimension Data is the title sponsor of Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka.<\/p>\n
However, says Gibson, the sponsorship is not just about financial investment in the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the same way that we believe the technologies of the new digital age will help our clients achieve their business outcomes, we aim to develop digital technologies that will assist Team Dimension Data to achieve their 2020 vision of winning the Tour de France.<\/p>\n
Location of each rider<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Which country and continent the riders are in when racing or training.<\/p>\n Travel:<\/strong><\/p>\n The teams\u2019 performance management need to understand the impact that travel has on the health and performance of riders, for example the impact that travel across time zones may have on the riders.<\/p>\n Sleep:<\/strong><\/p>\n Data such as whether the rider sleep at home, in a hotel, or on an aircraft is collected; and where he slept the previous night; what time the rider fell asleep and woke up, how longer the rider slept; the quality of sleep; and the altitude at which the rider slept and woke up, which is very important on a science level.<\/p>\n General wellbeing:<\/strong><\/p>\n Using scientifically validated scales that are simple to answer, riders are asked to rate their mood levels each day, their motivation and current stress levels, if they\u2019re feeling fatigued, or have muscle soreness.<\/p>\n Training:<\/strong><\/p>\n Riders are asked to provide a subjective view on their performance in training – or racing the previous day:\u00a0 did they perform as expected?\u00a0 What\u2019s really important about this data is how the rider feels about his training: what his rating was on perceived exertion? Is the rider responding well to the training that the coach prescribed?\u00a0 Did the effort feel like a 7\/10, a 5\/10, or a 9\/10?<\/p>\n Management:<\/strong><\/p>\n Was the rider able to train that day, and if the answer is no, was it the weather? Was he ill or injured? Or is there something else happening such as a bike fail? Even a stuffy nose is acted on. While a blocked nose may not appear to be serious, in the past, riders who have ignored the blocked nose and it turned into pneumonia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dimension Data, unveiled its health and wellness mobile app at the annual training camp of Africa\u2019s professional cycling team, Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":212119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[94,26],"class_list":["post-212115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-dimension-data","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212121,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212115\/revisions\/212121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}