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)是接触性运动中一个日益严重的问题，前球员被诊断为早发性痴呆的人数显著增加。这是运动员、教练、体育俱乐部、学校和家长日益关注的问题。数字、文化、媒体和体育委员会在2021年7月发布了一份报告，强调了这些担忧。HeadX正在开发一种智能头带，专门为支持球员、教师、教练和家长确保安全参与草根接触性运动而设计。这款智能头带设计了一系列加速计和陀螺仪，可以准确地捕捉运动员每秒100次的头部运动。到目前为止，他们已经开发出了小批量、概念验证的原型，并在当地的格洛斯特郡橄榄球俱乐部进行了试验。来自这些试验的证据为我们提供了极好的洞察力，让我们能够从可穿戴设备和数据分析中获得学习，从而加深我们对接触性运动和大脑健康的理解。这个项目提供了一个极好的机会，帮助教师和教练“识别并移除”任何造成脑损伤的球员。它还帮助教练球员提高他们的技术并从客观数据中学习。创新英国赠款资金将允许球队进一步开发他们的原型，以便与世界橄榄球一起进行第四定律创新试验。这笔资金将显著改善可穿戴设备的设计、尺寸和舒适性，同时开发软件，以提高在繁忙的学校橄榄球俱乐部环境中的可及性。软件开发将意味着俱乐部可以快速下载、分析和学习完成的课程。

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.