British Horseracing Authority Use Prestagia Software Service

February 27, 2012

British Horseracing Authority (BHA), the regulatory and governing body for horse racing in Great Britain has agreed a partnership with Presagia with the athlete health management system  providing on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis that the BHA will use to record, track, and analyze injuries and other medical data for licensed jockeys.

Horse racing is big business in Great Britain – it is the second biggest spectator sport after football, with an annual economic impact of more than £3.4 billion ($5.2 billion USD) according to Deloitte’s ‘Economic Impact of British Racing 2009’ study. The attention and stakes involved puts a lot of pressure on the BHA and their work to support the health of the jockeys and the sport.

The BHA collaborated with Presagia to configure Presagia Sports for the unique needs of the sport. The solution provides a consistent framework for its 238 doctors to track falls, injuries and health status for the more than 800 jockeys that compete at 60 different racecourses across Great Britain. The British Horseracing Authority preside over 1,456 fixtures per year, 40% of which are Jump racing fixtures where, on average, a jockey will have one fall every 14 rides. Presagia Sports has allowed the BHA to transition from a legacy paper-based system that had been used for more than 25 years, to a sophisticated and centralized database that is accessible anytime, anywhere over the Internet.

“The BHA reviewed a number of different systems before choosing Presagia, the only system that was able to fulfil all of the key requirements of this professional sport,” states Paul Lifton, Statistical & IT Analyst at the BHA. “The system had to ensure that busy racecourse medical teams could easily view and update the jockey’s medical database in real time.”

“It had to be simple to use, secure, robust and flexible enough to cope with all the special requirements of a sport that takes place nationwide, on every day of the year,” explains Dr. Michael Turner, the BHA’s Chief Medical Advisor. “Above all the system needed to allow the medical teams in the field to manage and share all this information in real time with the London-based BHA Medical Department.”

With the new system in place, the BHA expects to see major improvements in its workflow and record keeping processes, as well as in its ability to perform statistical analysis on medical data.

by Ismail Uddin