Port Adelaide players test new performance patch to diagnose if you are sick, underperforming

A diagnostic patch that could revolutionise medical treatment for Aussie athletes and soldiers is being tested by AFL stars.

Exclusive: A diagnostic patch that can gauge whether a soldier or an athlete will operate at their peak on any day — and what corrections might be needed — is under development.

So exciting is the concept, the Defence Department has already invested and tests are underway at one AFL club.

“It’s literally a Band-Aid-like patch that sits on the arm that provides real time digitisation of how the individual is performing” University of Adelaide’s Mark Professor Hutchinson said.

A performance blood test showed how well some Port Adelaide players had trained and how well they had performed on the day.

“This was the first time that anybody had been able to connect in elite athletes, the mind and the body and the potential for injury and cognitive states,” Prof. Hutchinson said.

Port Adelaide Football club players at training. Picture: PAFC

The research is pointing to future trials where mind exercises, like breathing control and visualisation, could help control the immune system and ultimately improve performance.

“When our immune systems gets bored, they’re not getting used, they tend to get up to mischief and so what exercise does, in a micro dosing way, it causes small amounts of damage which your body adapts to,” Professor Hutchinson said.

For defence personnel, the patches could have the added bonus of being able to detect within hours whether people have been exposed to chemical or biological weapons.

Australian soldiers could also use the patch.

They could also alert a soldier’s team leaders to game-changing battle and training field behaviour, including:

* potential loss of performance which may harm them or harm their units or the base that they’re operating on;

* whether on any day a soldier is able to “run full bore for 18 kilometres under significant stress or heat and perhaps water and food deprivation”; and

* whether a sonar operator or drone pilots are fully alert enough to concentrate on their jobs if they are under stress.

The knowledge would alert the person to take medicine if they had an infection or use breathing exercises and mindfulness to calm their system down.

The project is examining how immune cells can be measured to track and predict human performance.

Professor of Medicine Mark Hutchinson has been working on developing ways to measure pain and mental performance. Picture: Keryn Stevens

Prof. Hutchinson hopes to develop a test that will deliver consistency to athletes like Paralympian Michael Roeger, who broke the world record in London but finished sixth in the Tokyo Paralympics.

“What would he have done differently on the day, can we define where the edge of performance is so you know how to walk that tightrope of absolute peak performance without going over the edge and breaking,” Prof. Hutchinson said.

To improve their performance, he said individuals could be taught to control their heart rate, their immune system and their breathing rate to bring about a relaxed state using visualisation or breathing techniques.

Originally published as Port Adelaide players test new performance patch to diagnose if you are sick, underperforming