Smart headband for brain health management in school and grassroots sport

脑震荡、创伤性脑损伤（TBI）和慢性创伤性脑病（CTE）是接触性运动中日益严重的问题，前运动员被诊断为早发性痴呆的人数显著增加。这是球员、教练、体育俱乐部、学校和家长日益关注的问题。数字、文化、媒体和体育委员会于2021年7月发表了一份报告，强调了这些担忧。HeadX正在开发一种智能头带，专门用于支持球员，教师，教练和家长确保安全参与基层接触运动。智能头带设计了许多加速度计和陀螺仪，以每秒100次的速度精确捕捉玩家的头部运动。到目前为止，他们已经开发出了小批量的概念验证原型，并在当地的格洛斯特郡橄榄球俱乐部进行了试验。这些试验的证据提供了很好的见解，可以从可穿戴设备和数据分析中获得学习，以发展我们对身体接触运动和大脑健康的理解。这个项目提供了一个很好的机会，帮助教师和教练“识别和移除”任何遭受脑损伤的球员。这也有助于教练球员提高他们的技术，并从客观数据中学习。Innovate UK的拨款将允许该团队进一步开发他们的原型，以实现与世界橄榄球的第4条创新试验。这笔资金将大大改善可穿戴设备的设计、尺寸和舒适度，同时开发软件，以改善繁忙的学校橄榄球俱乐部环境中的可访问性。软件开发意味着俱乐部可以快速下载、分析和学习已完成的课程。

Concussion, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a growing issue in contact sport, with significant increase in former players being diagnosed with early onset dementia. This is a growing concern for players, coaches, sport clubs, schools and parents. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee produced a report in July 2021 highlighting these concerns.HeadX is developing a Smart Headband specifically designed to support players, teachers, coaches and parents in ensuring safe participation in grassroots contact sport. The smart headband is design a number of accelerometers and gyroscopes to accurately capture a players head movement 100 times a second. To date they have developed low volume, proof of concept prototypes that have been trialled at a local Gloucestershire Rugby club. The evidence from these trials provided excellent insight into the learning that can be gained from wearables and data analytics in developing our understanding of contact sports and brain health.This project provides an excellent opportunity to help teachers and coaches to "Recognise and Remove" any player that incurred brain trauma. It also help coach players to improve their technique and learn from objective data.Innovate UK grant funding will allow the team to further develop their prototype towards a Law 4 Innovation trial with World Rugby. The funding will significantly improve the design, size and comfort of the wearable device alongside developing the software to improve accessibility in a busy school rugby club environment. The software development will mean that a club can quickly download, analyse and learn from completed sessions.