A new discussion paper from the Australian Academy of Science has outlined concern over the collection of personal health data from professional athletes.
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The paper labelled the collection personal information like sleep patterns, heart pulse, nutrition, and menstruation through technologies like body-worn sensors, GPS tracking, accelerometers, Apple and Garmin watches and apps, as "expansive, invasive, and unchecked".
"There's multiple risks associated with the type of tech data that is collected from any of those sensors, with respect to athletes, there's questions about the veracity, or if you like, the validity of all of that data being collected," Associate Professor Jacqueline Alderson, co-director of the Minderoo tech and policy lab said.
"In the wider community, we look to the devices that are used in elite sport, because we think that they're going to be highly validated, the data is going to be very accurate, but much of that data is now being aggregated by very large tech companies, external to the sport and they have serious ramifications for the long term use of that data," she said.
Data collection is particularly invasive for female athletes, who can be asked to hand over menstruation and fertility information said Rachel Harris, Olympian and chief medical officer at Paralympics Australia and project lead for female performance at the Australian Institute of Sport.
"Many years ago, when I was at the Sydney Olympics, back in that day, what we were doing was was things like entering data into logbooks, paper-and-pen style and now that's transitioned to more tech-savvy ways and uploading a lot more of that electronic data," she said.
"Athletes are potentially being asked to share information like when they are getting their period, and what kind of symptoms they're having and that data can potentially be, depending on what the restrictions are on that data, can be shared among any number of roll holders. So that's pretty personal information."
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Dr Harris said some athletes have refused to allow the collection and storage of certain information, particularly in relation to mental health, fearing it will impact their career.
Kate Starre, Olympic gold medalist and high performance manager at the Fremantle AFLW club said more transparency is needed and that athletes should be allowed to own their own data as part of their contracts.
"We don't know where the data is being stored, so there's risks of just having that much information on an individual and not actually doing anything with it. So if we collect data, it should be purposeful, and for a reason."
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