New Technology Reduced Concussions To Zero For Canadian High School Football Team

For the past five years, the Handsworth Royals high school football team in North Vancouver, B.C. has averaged at least three concussions a season.

This past season the team was one of two secondary schools to test a new technology, Brainshield, sticker-like decals that are attached to both sides of a football helmet and reduce the force of an impact.

According to the Royal’s head coach Jay Prepchuk, not one player on the team suffered a concussion in 2015, a huge improvement. Needless to say, Prepchuk was pleased.

“Anything I can do as a coach that will improve the safety of the game for my players, I will. Brainshield is a product that we feel helped tremendously in reducing the number of head injuries we had this past season.”

The new technology was developed by Shield-X Technology of Vancouver. Headed by Daniel Abram, a researcher at Simon Fraser University who is the chief technology and operating officer of the company, the company has developed the decals which help reduce the force of an impact on the helmet with the inherent twisting of the head.

A decal that can be placed on any kind of helmet, no matter how complicated the design, the BrainShield has the potential to reduce not just head injuries for sports teams but also cyclists and motorcycle riders.

Made up of micro-engineered layers, the BrainShield diverts impact by reducing the frictional force applied to the helmet, thus mitigating rotational and linear acceleration of the brain.

Most blows to the head are delivered at an angle, rather than directly.

“Once you receive an impact, BrainShield doesn’t allow that force to be fully applied to the helmet, and so reduces the sharp twisting and compression of the brain,” Daniel Abram said. “You have a force coming down, but that force cannot catch on the helmet.”

The Simon Fraser University football team tested the decals for the 2014 season and saw a reduction from 14 concussions in 2013 to four in 2014.

Abram spent six years developing the patent-pending product, which has micro-engineered layers that slide underneath each other on impact.

The decals can be put on any helmet and need to be replaced after a year. BrainShield is now available at $19.99USD/pair for team orders.

He hopes to have more high school teams involved next season and to also develop the technology for bicycle helmets.

Check out the company’s technology.

With excerpts from the Vancouver Sun and CBC.

Photos: Shieldxtech.com