Head injuries are getting a lot of attention, all the way from little league teams to the pros. While the focus is primarily on football, other sports including baseball come into play on the issue. A new device, the gForce Tracker (GFT) will help athletes (and parents of younger athletes) track cumulative trauma to help tell players when they need a time out.
The gForce Tracker is an advanced linear g-force and rotational monitoring system that can be inserted into a helmet. The device is a fully programmable detection device that accumulates a reading of impacts to the head. The device monitors, measures and provides statistics such as the number if impacts, severity of impacts, local alarming when the impact exceeds an acceptable threshold, and accumulates the data to provide key metrics that help determine the health of a user, and if the player has suffered a possible head injury.
“We have designed a tracking device that re-creates the impact and allows you to measure and accumulate a lift time of impacts,” said co-founder Gerri Iuliano. “We are recreating the impacts from a linear and rotational perspective and making sure we are monitoring those over the lifetime of the player and or the employee — essentially, we are collecting data to develop your g-force impact DNA.”
The device is equipped with the Return to Play (RTP) interlock feature, which flashes an LED light once the g-force exceeds the threshold.
A monitor is more than useful, but will soon become a crucial tool for athletes, to spot potential concussions. “How is a coach or athletic trainer supposed ot determine this from just watching the activity on the field? It’s far too subjective and frankly not fair to put them in this position without giving them a tool to help determine the magnitude and severity of an impace, or several impacts over an entire game,” said co-founder Paul Walker.
The gForce Tracker can be inserted into a team-issued helmet. Parents can purchase the sensor and set it up for their child. The GFT is aimed at football players, but other sports including baseball and hockey are also prime users.