Conference advances integration of sports science and healthcare

The 2026 Sports Medicine and Health Conference opened recently in Haikou, Hainan province, to deepen the integrated development of sports and healthcare, advance the active health concept, and support safe sports rehabilitation and return-to-sports practices.Hosted to advance the Healthy China and "sports power" strategies, the conference aims to drive technological innovation and clinical transformation in sports medicine, while scaling up national public sports and health services. This year's event received over 1,000 academic papers from home and abroad and attracted nearly 1,000 industry representatives, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive academic gatherings in China's sports medicine sector.As the capital city of the Hainan Free Trade Port and the world's first international wetland city, Haikou boasts superior ecological conditions, a pleasant livable climate, and complete supporting facilities for large-scale exhibitions and academic events. The city has long fostered integrated development between fitness exercise, public health, sports rehabilitation and wellness industries, building a distinctive "sports plus rehabilitation" development model. By regularly hosting marathons, water sports and other mass sporting events, Haikou has accelerated the development of a population-wide sports and public health service system, providing a solid platform for in-depth academic exchanges and practical exploration of active health solutions.Bringing together leading experts, scholars, clinicians, researchers and industry practitioners across sports medicine, rehabilitation medicine, exercise physiology, public health and sports science, the conference builds a high-end platform for academic dialogue, research commercialization and industry-university-research collaboration. It also explores high-quality development pathways for disciplinary progress in sports medicine.Centered on the theme "Integrating Sports and Medicine, Uniting Fitness and Health, Advancing Active Health, and Empowering Return to Sports", the conference focuses on interdisciplinary integration between sports science and clinical medicine. It promotes whole-process sports intervention throughout disease prevention and management, aligns with national policies on sports-health integration, and links professional resources across sports, public health and medical rehabilitation sectors. The event strives to build a closed-loop integrated service model covering prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.Advocating the active health philosophy, the conference shifts the traditional disease-centric mindset of "prioritizing treatment over prevention". It guides the public to maintain physical and mental wellness through scientific exercise, effectively lowering risks of chronic illnesses and sports injuries. With standardized diagnosis and rehabilitation protocols as core support, the conference helps athletes and injured patients safely resume daily activities and professional sports training.The conference features a main forum, multiple parallel sub-forums, poster exchanges, industrial achievement exhibitions and free public health consultations. Its research agenda covers cutting-edge fields including prevention and treatment of competitive sports injuries, minimally invasive sports injury interventions, integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine rehabilitation, exercise intervention for chronic diseases, adolescent sports health management, elderly exercise prevention strategies, sports nutrition, AI-powered fitness assessment, and standardized sports prescription development.Organizers noted at the opening ceremony that China's health industry is undergoing a fundamental shift from passive disease treatment to proactive health management. As a core interdisciplinary field, sports medicine safeguards competitive sports safety, supports athletes' return-to-field recovery, and underpins national public health development by alleviating the social burden of chronic diseases.Leveraging the Hainan Free Trade Port's open platform advantages and local healthcare industrial foundations, the Haikou-based conference targets real-world clinical challenges and public health demands. It breaks down barriers between basic research, clinical application and industrial implementation, promotes grassroots dissemination of sports health technologies, and enables scientific exercise to benefit broader communities.During keynote sessions, academicians and renowned experts shared the latest global advances in sports medicine. Participants conducted in-depth discussions on frontier topics, including innovative rehabilitation materials, skeletal muscle injury repair, cardiopulmonary exercise risk evaluation, digital sports prescriptions, and exercise intervention for metabolic disorders. They also explored the application prospects of artificial intelligence and wearable monitoring technologies in sports health, analyzed integrated Chinese and Western medicine rehabilitation approaches for sports injuries, and exchanged insights on functional reconstruction and standardized return-to-sports assessment systems.Parallel sub-forums held multi-level specialized dialogues covering high-incidence injuries of the ankle, knee, shoulder and spine, adolescent posture screening and scientific exercise guidance, exercise intervention strategies for myasthenia and osteoporosis among middle-aged and elderly groups, athlete medical supervision, competition medical security system construction, and post-injury return-to-sports evaluation criteria. Experts shared rich clinical cases, technical demonstrations and practical experience to upgrade industry-wide clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation capabilities. Meanwhile, academic poster exhibitions showcased China's latest research achievements in sports medicine, fostering talent development and disciplinary innovation among young scholars.The conference also launched a sports and health industry exhibition, displaying intelligent fitness assessment devices, rehabilitation robots, sports monitoring equipment and digital sports prescription platforms. The exhibition accelerates the industrial transformation of scientific research outcomes and demonstrates the digital and intelligent development trends of integrated sports and healthcare industries.Powered by sports AI models and intelligent information platforms, the industry ecosystem effectively bridges the long-standing gap between sports and medical sectors. By integrating expert sports medicine databases and massive clinical samples, the platform empowers grassroots medical institutions, sports organizations and elderly care facilities. It delivers customized exercise guidance for teenagers, sub-health groups, chronic disease patients and elderly populations, realizing the popularization of standardized professional sports prescriptions.