Hyperconnectivity and UC For Kicks

The AC Milan football/soccer team has won 18 officially recognized international titles, more than any other club in the world.

To enhance its performance, MilanLab was established in 2002 as the team's High Tech Scientific Research Centre, the primary purpose of which is to optimize the psycho-physical management of the athletes.

To this end, they have partnered with Microsoft to develop a UC-enabled athlete monitoring system to track the total state of physical, mental and social well-being of each athlete, balancing three principal functional levels: neurostructural, physio-chemical-biological, and mental. The ultimate objective is to manage optimized training programs around these dependencies, void injuries and speed up recovery when injuries occur.

Interestingly, league rules prohibit sensors on players during games, but there are no such restrictions in practices.

UC comes to play to enable richer communications among personal trainers, management and the athletes. Needless to say, the system will stress UC usability beyond the office environment having to cater to the whims of some thirty multimillionaire athletes;)

Not surprisingly, not much information is available on the status of the system, given it's highly competitive nature.