
Work It: Player's Health | An App that's Working to Reduce Y
Special | 6m 24sVideo has Closed Captions
Meet Tyrre Burks of Player's Health, a platform to manage the health and wellness.
Meet Tyrre Burks of Player's Health, a powerful platform to manage the health and wellness of an entire sports organization. Player's Health provides athletic organizations with the essential medical information and injury reporting via a HIPAA compliant mobile application to manage the health and care of youth athletes. More at http://www.rewire.org/.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

Work It: Player's Health | An App that's Working to Reduce Y
Special | 6m 24sVideo has Closed Captions
Meet Tyrre Burks of Player's Health, a powerful platform to manage the health and wellness of an entire sports organization. Player's Health provides athletic organizations with the essential medical information and injury reporting via a HIPAA compliant mobile application to manage the health and care of youth athletes. More at http://www.rewire.org/.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
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(soft electronic music) - I think youth sports made me the person who I am today.
And I want to make sure that any athlete that plays youth sports has the best experience possible.
Injuries are a huge part of that, their health is a part of that, their happiness is a part of that.
Because most kids, they just want to play.
When they get hurt, they'll do anything to get back on that field again.
I just want to make sure that they have the best resources, the right content, the right data, so that we can make the best decisions on how we get them back on the field.
I think every athlete in America should have a Player's Health record.
Right now, they're about 50% of all of our injuries that we have in youth sports that are preventable.
Can we reduce that by half by 2020?
That's my goal.
We believe that caring for them today allows them to be able to have a better life later.
(contemplative music) I started Player's Health as my own personal journey.
I played youth football, and I was able to play it professionally for a number of years.
But when I was about 15, I got hit with my head down.
I was catching a slow ball.
I got hit, I was paralyzed on the turf for about 30, 45 minutes, couldn't move.
And then miraculously, everything started to come back.
Got up, walked off, my coach was like, "Hey, I think you have a stinger, you're fine."
A year later, I had the exact same injury happen to me.
Come to find out, I had three bulging disks in my neck.
I had been playing with that condition for an entire year.
That injury led to lower back injuries, hamstring injuries, and ultimately led to the end of my career.
I was playing for Saskatchewan Rough Riders, and I had just torn my hamstring off my tibia.
I was on crutches.
I was depressed, and I was like, you know, what's next?
I had an injury-riddled season at that point, and I was just like, you know, I need to figure out a way to make this better for youth.
As a professional athlete, there was nothing that I didn't have when it came to medical support, equipment, facilities.
Youth sports, they don't have a fraction of what most professional or collegiate athletes have, for that matter.
And I was really passionate about making sure that youth athletes have some resources to help them when it comes to managing their health.
So that they one day could become not a professional athlete, but just be able to run around with their kids when they need to, basically.
- Yeah, in this case, he had broke his thumb.
So we just have that as a past injury.
So, here's his active, so nothing wrong today.
I found it very interesting that Tyrre would have this vision to say, look, there has to be a better way for documenting injuries.
The Player's Health application addresses that need.
We had a kid that was in school, and they had fallen backwards in their chair, and sustained a concussion that way.
We don't think of those things as coaches and everything out here, but as parents they can say, look, I'm going to communicate this.
My son sustained a concussion in school and I just want to communicate that to you.
Okay, the coach knows what to look for then.
We need to adapt to the times.
And we need something that's gonna be easy to communicate, easy to record injuries and risks, and be able to document those things in a way that is easy for the coach, is easy for the parents, and also helps to minimize the risk for the organization.
- Player's Health is a health management platform.
It's an application that an organization purchases.
The parent puts in the initial information that they put in that paper form when they first sign their kid up for sports.
So, does the kid have diabetes, asthma, nut allergy?
What do we do when these things happen?
Coach can open it up, view all this information.
And then when injuries happen, the coach documents what happened.
I think the best thing of what we're doing here at Player's Health, and my job of starting this company, is that we're creating something that has never existed before.
Most organizations in youth sports don't even document injuries, period.
If I ask a youth sports organization right now how many concussions they had last year, they couldn't tell me.
So, in terms of the data, we're at nothing.
And Player's Health is building a really strong foundation for how we view injuries long-term.
We had a youth football club implement our system, and they were able to see that 31% of their injuries were head injuries.
Well, why is that important?
Well, because as youth athletes, especially football, that first three weeks of camp or practice, they're just learning the game.
They're just learning how to get hit.
All of these injuries is when they happen the most.
So maybe, from having that data, we should bring in hitting a little bit later into the practices or weeks.
Getting organizations an understanding that the next level of support for health is important, and is gonna save these kids' life.
(soft xylophone music) I think being able to work with a team, the ability to be able to bounce back when you don't win all the games, right?
Being resilient, all of these are attributes as an entrepreneur that you need to have to be successful.
The odds are against you to be a professional athlete.
The odds are also against you to be successful in startups.
Nine out of every 10 startups fail.
I'm used to those odds, and I'm comfortable with them.
So, I think me being an athlete helped me be able to weather the storm and build a company like this.
But understand that it's not gonna be perfect.
And that if we stay focused, disciplined, and we work with our team, we'll be successful.
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