The day when monitoring of head impact exposure in football and other contact and collision sports becomes commonplace is closer at hand than one might think.
An increasing number of helmet sensor products in this rapidly evolving field are already on, or about to come to, the market. Most but not all are designed to capture the kind of data that an increasing number of concussion experts say is needed to combat the chronic underreporting/under-identification problem and to track the number and force of subconcussive hits that have also become a growing concern.
The following is a list of some of the impact sensor products that are on, or about to, come to, the market. If you are a impact sensor manufacturer who would to have your product included in this guide, please send your information to editors@momsteam.com. Your product will be added free of charge. ***
InSite Impact Response System (Riddell)
The Riddell InSite Impact Response System is a new integrated monitoring and alert system designed specifically for the proactive protection of football players. Riddell developed InSite based on its Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS) and Sideline Response System (SRS), a technology that has analyzed nearly 1.8+ impacts since 2003. It is one of four impact sensors being worn during the 2013 football season by the Newcastle, Oklahoma high school football team featured in the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making Football Safer."
Brain Sentry
Brain Sentry was founded by a team of award-winning product developers with backgrounds in aerospace, medical products and sports.The result of Brain Sentry's efforts has been the development of an innovative helmet-mounted device that alerts when an athlete suffers a potentially dangerous impact. We help coaches, parents and safety monitors identify players that should be evaluated for a concussion. Our focus is every kid and every helmet. Our development team took significant efforts in designing a system that accurately measures appropriate impact forces, is affordable, is safe, and does not burden the volunteer heroes that run youth sports leagues.
It is one of four impact sensors being worn during the 2013 football season by the Newcastle, Oklahoma high school football team featured in the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making Football Safer."
For full product details, click here.
Vector Mouth Guard (i1 Biometrics)
1 Biometrics' Vector Mouthguard is a state-of-the-art product that measures the linear and rotational impact, location, and level of each hit an athlete has absorbed during all levels of competition in contact sports. This data can provide sideline personnel with the resources they need to make real-time assessment of the athlete's exposure to impacts sustained on the field. The information gathered is available throughout an athlete's playing career, with their brain's impact history all stored in a secure cloud database. A prototype of the mouthguard is featured in the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making Football Safer."
For full product details, click here.
Safe Brain
Safebrain is a sensor that athletes wear on their helmets to help determine if they may have been hit hard enough to have a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Our product is essentially a ‘Black Box' for the brain. It measures G-force impact, and if a player is hit hard enough, at a force that exceeds their personal threshold, then a flashing light on the sensor will alert trainers that the athlete needs to be evaluated for a head injury. Our sensors also log data that can be downloaded after a game, to assist doctors or trainers in determining the severity of the head injury.
It is one of four impact sensors being worn during the 2013 football season by the Newcastle, Oklahoma high school football team featured in the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making Football Safer."
For full product details, click here.
Shockbox (i1 Biometrics)
Attached inside a player's helmet, the ShockboxTM wireless impact sensorfrom Impakt Protective measures the g-force of a hit to the helmet from any direction, sending data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a smart phone or laptop computer of an athletic trainer, coach or parent on the sideline and triggering an alert when the athlete suffers a head impact that may of sufficient force to be concussive so they can be checked on the sideline using standard concussion assessment tools, such as the Standardized Assessment of Concussion, Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT3), or King-Devick test. The Shockbox can also track the number of subconcussive hits. Shockbox helmet sensors are now available for hockey and football helmets, and versions for lacrosse and snowboard helmets are in the product development pipeline.
It is one of four impact sensors being worn during the 2013 football season by the Newcastle, Oklahoma high school football team and is featured in the PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making Football Safer."
For full product details, click here
Gforce Tracker
The GForceTracker™ (GFT) is small and durable advanced monitoring system that provides real-time, quantitative data on linear g-force and rotational acceleration to help teams, trainers, and doctors measure and detect impacts and injuries. It is a fully programmable detection device that measures g force impacts and includes Return to Play (RTP) interlock software. The GFT can be used in any head protection related sport or profession. ie. football, hockey, baseball, lacrosse, cycling, equestrian, construction, mining, military, etc.
For full product details, click here.
*** Important Note & Disclaimer: The information about the sensor systems, as well as information contained on any additional pages of the MomsTEAM site to which the reader is directed for more detailed information about a particular impact sensor product, is based on information furnished in some cases by the manufacturers themselves, or which MomsTEAM staff has gleaned from their websites.
MomsTEAM does not endorse any particular product over any other, and provides this guide for informational purposes only, although MomsTEAM does believe that impact sensors, properly used, can provide sideline personnel with a tool to help them identify athletes who may have been concussed, track impacts over time, and provide coaches with information which may be used to adjust the blocking and/or tackling technique of a player in order to reduce the number of heavy hits.
In addition, in order to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, while MomsTEAM has, in the past, accepted sponsorship money from sensor manufacturers, in return for which they have been provided space to promote their products and allowed to run banner advertising over their articles (all of which clearly denoted that they are Sponsored Content so as to make clear that the fact that they appear does not in any way constitute an endorsement by MomsTEAM and that the content is not subject to editorial review by MomsTEAM's editors), MomsTEAM will now offer any impact sensor manufacturer the opportunity to be listed in this product guide, and will no longer accept sponsorship dollars from those companies, who, up to now, have paid for such access.
For answers to impact sensor FAQ's, click here.
Posted June 26, 2013; most recently revised March 9, 2016
