(RFIDWorld.ca) Treehouse Labs, headquartered in Austin, Texas is taking part in a pilot project creating helmets with RFID tags placed inside the helmets to detect the impact on the helmet when worn by football players to alert coaches and medical staff of potential concussions the player may experience.
The RFID tags are embedded on the inside of the testing helmets and the data is transferred onto a server, which can be accessed through Smart Phones. The data will give coaches and medical staff information to decide whether a player needs medical treatment ahead of time. This will prevent serious head injuries and give medical staff more time to decide how an injured player should be treated.
In addition to improving football player’s long-term health and safety, this system can also prove helpful for other sports, which involve contact such as ice hockey or lacrosse. Other sports such as auto racing motorcycling and bicycling can also benefit from the introduction of such helmets.
Treehouse Labs decided to pilot such helmets after seeing statistics announced by the American College of Sports Medicine stating that over 85% of sports-related concussions go untreated, which could cause damage to the brain in the long term for a player.
