Rugby player develops device to track head trauma

A rugby player has developed a wearable device to monitor head trauma after a teammate was forced to stop playing the sport due to injury.

Euan Bowen, 28, played the game at university and in his final year in 2018, when a teammate suffered three concussion injuries in one season.

It spurred Mr Bowen to develop an idea for a device to track brain health into the HIT Impact technology, which detects g-force and records impact on an app.

After spending time at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh Business School (EBS) Incubator, his product is expected to move into production within the next two months.

The sensor he developed can clip on to headguards, any helmet or halo headband and is accompanied by an app which has a 150-metre range capable of recording from multiple devices - with a "Team Play" recording function for sports like football and rugby.

It displays a graph showing the force threshold, set by a user, and severity, with a traffic light system and notifications enabling those monitoring to check on a user's injury.

Kallum Russell, EBS Incubator manager, said it is "much-needed technology", adding: "The current parliamentary inquiry into concussion recently heard evidence about the long-term implications of repetitive head trauma on sports people, with MPs asking how sports could be made safer.

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Source: The Independent, 8 April 2021