Mark Opar - The Sports Tech Transition from Elite Sport to Healthcare

In this episode of Accelerate Podcast, host Nicola Graham is joined by Mark Opar — a clinical physiotherapist of ten years who made the leap into sports technology, and now serves as Head of Strategy for Health at VALD, one of the world's leading sports technology companies.

Mark's career has bridged the clinic and the boardroom — giving him a rare perspective on what it takes to translate elite sport innovation into everyday healthcare. VALD's force plates, strength testing systems, and assessment tools are trusted by thousands of elite teams worldwide, and Mark's mission is to bring that same objective assessment capability to clinics, hospitals, and the general population.

At the centre of the conversation is a provocative thesis: objective assessment isn't just about better data — it's about better engagement. Mark unpacks how giving practitioners and patients a shared language changes the dynamic of care, driving motivation, trust, and ultimately better outcomes.

The discussion also explores the realities of moving from clinician to corporate strategist, and what elite sport can teach healthcare about measuring what matters.

Topics Discussed

• The Clinician-to-Corporate Transition
• VALD's Origins and Product Development Philosophy
• Crossing from Elite Sport to Healthcare
• Workflow and Education Barriers to Clinical Adoption
• Patient Engagement and Objective Assessment
• Return on Investment in Private Practice
• Technology Implementation and Behaviour Change

Key Points

• From Subjective to Objective: Redefining Clinical Assessment

  The shift from subjective to objective assessment in healthcare settings represents a fundamental change in clinical practice. Force plates and dynamometers enable practitioners to quantify strength, movement, function, and balance at laboratory grade within clinically usable timeframes. Traditional approaches such as the Oxford Muscle Scale — originally designed for neurological populations — offer extremely limited discrimination between healthy individuals, with only two practically meaningful grades available for non-pathological presentations. Objective measurement provides numerical, reproducible data that transforms the clinical conversation between practitioner and patient, creating a shared framework for understanding injury status, rehabilitation progress, and evidence-based discharge criteria beyond simple symptom resolution.

• Problem-First Innovation: VALD's Product Development Philosophy

  VALD's product development philosophy has centred consistently on identifying and solving genuine practitioner problems rather than developing technology for its own sake. Each device — from the NordBord to the ForceFrame, ForceDecks, and HumanTrak — was introduced in response to demonstrated clinical needs identified through close relationships with practitioners in the field. The NordBord itself originated from PhD research designed to combine the measurement validity of isokinetic dynamometry with the portability and usability of field-grade devices. This evidence-based, problem-first approach has been a consistent competitive differentiator, contrasting with technology companies that achieve limited market traction because their products fail to address real-world clinical workflows.

• Bridging Elite Sport and Healthcare Markets

  The transition from elite sport to healthcare markets required substantial adaptation primarily in workflow design rather than the underlying measurement science. The physical qualities assessed — strength, movement, function, and balance — remain largely comparable between elite athletes and general clinical populations, including older adults and surgical patients. However, the tolerance for workflow friction differs substantially across these settings. Healthcare environments demand faster, more intuitive processes, as practitioners operate in high-volume, time-pressured contexts without the specialist support infrastructure typically available in professional sport. Addressing workflow friction, rather than advancing measurement capability, has been the primary challenge in achieving consistent clinical adoption.

• Patient Engagement as an Indirect Source of ROI

  Patient engagement represents a significantly underappreciated source of indirect return on investment for objective assessment technology in private practice. Moving away from pain as the primary currency of rehabilitation — where discharge is triggered by symptom resolution rather than functional benchmarks — gives patients a clearer, data-informed understanding of their recovery trajectory. The availability of normative reference data is particularly powerful, enabling practitioners to demonstrate that a patient who has achieved limb symmetry may still be performing in a low percentile for their age and sex. This provides a clinically justified rationale for continued intervention that patients can readily understand and accept as evidence-based rather than arbitrary.

• The Organisational Conditions for Successful Adoption

  Successful implementation of objective assessment technology in clinical settings is consistently associated with specific organisational conditions that exist independently of the technology itself. Deploying equipment in underperforming clinics without addressing underlying operational or cultural issues does not produce the intended outcomes. Effective adoption is characterised by clear internal ownership, with designated champions responsible for driving consistent use across the team, and by the integration of measurement into systematic clinical workflows. Whether implementation is mandated through protocol or led by internal advocates, the presence of an engaged internal driver is consistently one of the most reliable predictors of successful adoption.

• How Practitioner Education Drives Technology Adoption

  Education of the practitioner market has been a critical enabler of technology adoption in healthcare settings. Early commercial approaches that emphasised the breadth of available metrics — such as highlighting 200 measurements generated within the countermovement jump — proved counterproductive, creating anxiety among clinicians with limited biomechanics exposure rather than stimulating interest. Investment in structured practitioner guides and short-form educational content through VALD Academy has addressed the time constraints and knowledge gaps that previously limited adoption. Positioning these resources as openly accessible, rather than restricting them to existing clients, reflects a strategy that elevating practitioner capability across the sector ultimately benefits the broader objective assessment category.

• Universities Drive a Generational Shift in Practitioner Expectations

  University integration of objective assessment technology has created a generational shift in practitioner expectations entering the workforce. Students trained with force plates and dynamometers as standard equipment develop an expectation that these tools will be present in their clinical workplaces. Organisations that have been slow to adopt measurement technology have begun to experience recruitment disadvantages, as candidates actively enquire about available assessment tools before accepting positions. This demand-side pressure from newly qualified practitioners is accelerating technology adoption among segments of the healthcare market that were previously resistant to commercial arguments, effectively creating a market pull dynamic rather than requiring a purely supply-side push.

• The Evolving Reimbursement Landscape for Objective Assessment

  The reimbursement landscape for objective assessment technology in healthcare is evolving, though progress has been slow and geographically inconsistent across different national healthcare funding models. There is a developing argument that practitioners who deliver assessments supported by validated objective measurement should be eligible for higher reimbursement rates than those relying solely on subjective methods, on the basis of demonstrably superior service quality. Health insurers and payers are beginning to engage with population-level data that supports this position, but the complexity of different national systems and the institutional scale of payer organisations creates significant barriers to achieving rapid change in reimbursement structures across global markets.

• Why Clinical Expertise Strengthens Commercial Outcomes

  The employment of clinically trained practitioners in commercial and strategic roles has been a deliberate policy that addresses fundamental limitations of generalist sales approaches in specialist healthcare markets. Allied health professionals tend to be inherently sceptical buyers who identify scripted or superficial responses quickly when speaking with representatives unfamiliar with clinical reality. Subject matter experts from physiotherapy, strength and conditioning, and sports science backgrounds can engage authentically in problem-solving conversations, applying genuine clinical reasoning to a client's specific operational context. This approach satisfies the clinician's need for peer validation and creates more substantive commercial relationships than are typically achievable through traditional business development methods.

• Practitioner Behaviour Change as the Next Frontier

  Behaviour change among established practitioners represents an emerging frontier for technology adoption that extends beyond education and product quality. Practitioners may intellectually understand the value of objective assessment while remaining resistant to changing embedded clinical habits. This challenge is distinct from addressing knowledge gaps or workflow friction and requires engagement with the psychological drivers of professional behaviour. Allied health professionals are, by training, experienced agents of behaviour change in their patient interactions, which may provide a foundation for adapting evidence-based behaviour change frameworks to support practitioner adoption. Addressing this layer of resistance is likely to become increasingly important as objective assessment technology moves toward broader mainstream clinical uptake.

Sponsors

Gameplan Performance, Gameplan Performance is a rehab Project Management & Data Analytics Platform that improves operational & communication efficiency during rehab. Gameplan provides a centralised tool for MDT's to work collaboratively inside a data rich environment.

Hytro: The world's leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport.

VALD, makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training.