Force Impact Technologies are working to increase early concussion detection among athletes with its new product, the FITGuard. The FITGuard is a head injury awareness mouthguard that will assist athletes with their timing of returning to play when there is a possibility of head injury. Coaches and officials will have an instant indication of the impact force an athlete just absorbed with the color-coded LEDs embedded in the front of the mouthguard.
Force Impact Technologies believes the unique placement of the FITGuard’s sensors provides a high correlation back to the center of gravity of the brain. With the LED indication system coupled with the FITApp, a signal of green, blue, or red is used to represent a low, medium, or high force impact respectively. Something so simple as a red light could change the course of an athlete’s career.
Get The Latest Sports Tech News In Your Inbox!
“We’re not trying to change the way sports are played, and we absolutely do not diagnose concussions. What we’re trying to do is call out significant impacts that may have been missed by coaches and officials. We just want to create awareness around the types of impacts that athletes are receiving, so that parents and athletes can make informed decisions,” said Anthony Gonzales, co-founder Force Impact Technologies.
After each impact, data can be transferred to the FITApp. This app will allow athletes and coaches to monitor and log the impacts they’ve received. This could help create some basic injury evaluations for players. The FITGuard is user-specific. It accounts for each athlete’s age, weight, and gender using the FITApp.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 47% of athletes will not self-report the symptoms of a concussion. Bob Merriman, co-founder of Force Impact Technologies says this may result from players not feeling the symptoms, or just so they can return to the game. If successful the FITGuard could provide athletes with better treatment and will make the game less dangerous.
With all the recent discussions about concussions in high impact sports like football, it is important to see that these companies are not necessarily saying to stop playing football. Technology like the FITGuard could potentially help change impact games and give players more information about themselves in order to play more safely.
But it’s not just high impact sports that are beginning to use new mouthguard technology. Kevin Love and the Shock Doctor, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of protective and performance sports equipment, have tried bringing the equipment to basketball. Basketball players between the ages of 13 through 17 are the most linked to frequent dental issues. The American Dental Association’s studies claim that these players are 15 times more likely to deal with orofacial damage than those that play football. So properly detecting concussions in all sports is paramount.
There is so much potential for this technology to prevent injuries among a variety of sports if used right. FITGuard is different than the top tier custom dental mouth guard because it absorbs how much damage has been done and reports it in the FITApp. Custom fit mouth guards however provide individualized protection as they are made from your unique dental impression. The FITGuard has definitely developed an innovative way to prevent injury by focusing on impact. Maybe Force Impact Technologies will begin creating some customized FITGuards next. Until then, we hope this technology will be put to good use by athletes and coaches everywhere.