Head injuries incurred during football games can have a profound impact on a player's future quality of life. A recent New York Times article has found a relationship between brain damage and a football player's predisposition to suicide. Even worse, the growing trend points to more head injuries over the next decade.

Virginia Tech is taking this danger seriously. It has started a program that it hopes will become the norm for all football programs worldwide. When its team, the Hokies, takes the field, chips in players' helmets transmit every tackle, hit, and fall to a Sybase database on the sidelines. From there, the data is transmitted to a national database that is aimed at reducing concussions and hedging some of the harmful effects the sport can have on player's brains.

Created by Simbex, the Head Impact Telemetry Systems (HITS) attaches small accelerometers to the player's head; the information is transmitted over a 900-MHz wireless signal. Along with the benefit of cataloguing this information for future use, the system is also useful for transmitting real-time data to doctors on the sidelines, who can monitor impacts of 98 g (98 times the force of gravity) or more. Because players are often unaware that they've suffered concussions, they may continue to play without alerting the sidelines. Once doctors are paged with this information, they can pull the player aside and decide whether or not he should continue to play. So doctors are effectively averting the possibility of permanent brain damage that is so common today.

Virginia Tech hopes to install the chips into every player's helmet within the next year, but funding is slow, and the cost of installing the equipment is high. The University is waiting for independent funding from the National Institute of Health.

Via eWeek

Post by Don Reisinger