Concussions are the most common type of traumatic brain injury, and unfortunately are a growing epidemic among youth and professional athletes. Villanova University's Ed Dougherty, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is working on a groundbreaking wearable sensor that is able to monitor and log head impact activity over multiple sports over long periods of time (up to decades)to detect concussions.

For example, the player can place the sensor device in a football helmet, easily move it to a lacrosse helmet, and then use it as part of a headband while playing soccer. Ideally the person will wear the device for all physical activities over long periods of time.

Date from head impact activity is stored on a micro SD card, and can be copied via USB to a database where it can be used to evaluate player performance, and individual and cumulative head impacts over the years.

One version of the sensor is able to send data to the sideline when either polled by the medical staff or automatically transmitted when certain conditions exist, such as a head impact over a certain threshold or an alert based on the accumulation of impacts. Any player wearing a device can, with their permission of course, be monitored by the coaching / medical staff, so in football all 22 players in a football could be monitored in real time.

Please contact Kiera Daly for additional information.