Special Olympics Healthy Athletes Global Partner
Since 2003 Health One Global Limited has been the exclusive Special Olympics Healthy Athletes Global Partner for electronic health records.
Timothy P. Shriver, Special Olympics Chairman, says of Health One Global Limited’s contribution “A global technology partner of this caliber is exciting for Special Olympics. As our Movement continues to grow and further benefit the lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities, we need the kind of state-of-the-art databases and software systems that Health One Global can provide”.
Health One Global supports Special Olympics as a charitable donation. Special Olympics uses HEALTHone to record the health screening data at the 600 Healthy Athletes events each year in 65 countries.
With HEALTHone Special Olympics has created the world’s largest and most comprehensive research database on the health of citizens with intellectual disability.
Special Olympics World Summer Games
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At the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai in October 2007, 7,000 athletes from 155 countries round the world, did participate in the biggest sporting event on the planet in 2007. |
Over the 8 days of the event, Special Olympics recorded in HEALTHone 18,536 health screening sessions on 4,879 athletes from 159 countries - a world record for Special Olympics (and probably for any other organization). In addition over 2,000 Medical Encounters (accidents, or illnesses) were recorded in HEALTHone over the Internet in Chinese by several hundred Chinese doctors at 200 Medical Centers located at World Summer Games venues all over Shanghai (details). During the Shanghai games, a prototype portable healthcare record (PHR) was demonstrated, and Special Olympics announced its decision to launch a pilot for the use of PHRs in co-operation with HEALTH One Global. | 
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| A Special Olympics volunteer ophthalmologist examines the eyes of an athlete during the World Summer Games in Shanghai in October 2007 |
A Chinese volunteer enters the screening data into athletes’ records using HEALTHone Internet during the World Summer Games and shown on a CCTV5 Chinese TV report | 
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Special Olympics
Special Olympics was founded in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of John F Kennedy, as an international non-profit organization dedicated to empowering individuals with intellectual disabilities through sports training and competition.
Special Olympics is the world’s largest amateur sports organization and provides year-round training and competition in 26 Olympic-type summer and winter sports.
2.5 million athletes in 169 countries participate at over 20,000 events every year at county, state, provincial, national and regional level, culminating in the Summer and Winter World Games every 4 years.
Alongside its sporting activities Special Olympics runs a global program called Healthy Athletes to provide free healthcare screening at the largest 600 Special Olympics sports events worldwide each year. This makes Special Olympics unique. There is no other organisation in the world that seeks to offer free healthcare services to a population of 2.5m individuals in 169 countries.
There is no charge to athletes to participate in Special Olympics and the whole movement, world-wide, is supported entirely by volunteers and sponsorship.
Special Olympics is open to all races, religions and ethnicities regardless of income, class or gender. As a result, Special Olympic athletes represent the whole of humanity, multicultural and multilingual, from all societies and from all walks of life.
Special Olympics has no ethnic, religious or social agenda, simply the desire to help individuals achieve self respect and dignity, and acts with complete ethnic, religious and social sensitivity in all its global operations.
Proven benefits of participation in Special Olympics include:
- enhanced self-confidence and social abilities in daily life;
- greater readiness for employment;
- better preparation for independent living;
- increased ability to make personal decisions;
- improved friendships and family relationships.
Put simply, Special Olympics changes lives.
