The University of Washington (UW) and its affiliated Seattle-based start-up company, Vicis, Inc., have invented and introduced a crushable football helmet that may well be the best technology yet developed which can reduce the rate of concussions in football.
This new helmet design is the outcome of research conducted at the University of Washington and, more specifically, from faculty members Samuel Browd, M.D., Ph.D., Jonathan Posner, Ph.D. and Per Reinhall and their faculty and student colleagues at the University.
Samuel Browd is associate professor of neurological surgery, attending neurosurgeon, medical director of the Seattle Children’s Sports Concussion Program. Jonathan Posner is associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW and Per Reinhall is a professor and department chair of mechanical engineering at UW. In addition to their academic work, the team also has a strong working relationship with the Seattle Seahawks professional football team. Dr. Browd covers concussion management on the sidelines as an unaffiliated neurologic consultant.
The key to their new helmet is that it absorbs force by crumbling upon impact—like the front bumper of a car. But unlike the car’s bumper, this helmet also bounces back to its original shape.
Starting Over With Helmets
Football helmets were originally designed to prevent skull fractures. The hard shell design for today’s football helmet was introduced around 1935 with the Michigan State Wing helmet.
The hard-shell design effectively prevented skull fractures, but did not stop concussions from becoming a devastating side effect of playing the game.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention 1.6 million to 3.8 million sports-related concussions occur annually in the U.S., and those numbers are conservative—as many as 50% of concussions go unreported.
The University of Washington team decided to start over with helmet designs. With the help of CoMotion (a University of Washington technology commercialization incubator) the team defined the problem as creating a helmet that would reduce linear and rotational acceleration to the football player’s brain—the forces, in other words, likely to cause concussion.
The UW helmet project received early funding from the UW Center for Commercialization (C4C) and the Coulter Foundation. When the team helped to form a company called Vicis, Inc. to continue development and eventual commercialization, it then received investments from Seattle-based Alliance of Angels and the W-Fund, a venture capital fund that provides early-stage investment to accelerate the success of Washington’s most promising technology-based startup companies originating from research institutions and students across the state.
A video at the end of this article shows how the helmet works.
Winner of the Head Health Challenge II Award
The team at UW along with the UW start-up Vicis, Inc., was named one of the winners of the 2014 National Football League, GE and Under Armour funded Head Health Challenge II. The purpose of the award is to support solutions that help prevent, measure and detect brain injury.
More than 500 proposals from 19 countries were submitted for the 2014 Head Health Challenge. (Visit www.headhealthchallenge.com to learn more.)
Dave Marver, CEO of Vicis said: “Our win validates this helmet’s promise as a significant breakthrough in the protection of young athletes against brain injury.”
UW professor and co-founder of Vicis Jonathan Posner said: “Every engineering design project starts with the users or stakeholders. What do they need? For football helmets, it’s obvious: They need something to protect their heads. But there are other aspects, too. How you clean the helmet, service it, and take it off of someone’s injured head. What it looks like. All of those aspects feed into how the helmet is designed and developed.”
UW professor, Engineering Department Head and Vicis co-founder Per Reinhall said: “UW Mechanical Engineering is full of bright and talented people who are eager to solve the problem of sports-related concussion. Our selection as a grant recipient demonstrates the potential of our helmet.”
UW professor and neurosurgeon Samuel Browd, who initially formed the Vicis team and co-invented the technology with Reinhall, said: “UW Neurological Surgery and our partners throughout UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s are at the forefront of concussion research, diagnosis, prevention, treatment and advocacy. We are confident this new helmet will help diminish the risk of concussion among young athletes.”
Here is the video which demonstrates how the new helmet design works and why it is such a promising new approach to preventing concussions in football: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bMOMf3S_EA.
