The PlayerMD™ Solution
A Breakthrough for Player & the People Who Care for Them
PlayerMD™ uses recent advancements in sensor design and wireless technology to create a new generation in the identification of potential TBI and overheating related injuries. PlayerMD™ is a low-cost, compact and self-contained platform that measures the linear and rotational acceleration of an impact and sends automatic alerts when an impact exceeds a player’s personalized thresholds or is in danger of overheating. The headgear is supplied as a skullcap for helmeted sports or a headband for non-helmeted sports. This makes PlayerMD™ ideal for football, soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, bicycling, skiing, cheerleading, or any other sport or physical activity where athletes are exposed to the risk of TBI and overheating.
PlayerMD’s™ sensors transmit real-time biometric and impact related data to a centralized TBI Medical Database whenever an impact exceeds 10Gs in force. This data is not only compared to a player’s personalized threshold to send alerts indicating a potential injury but it can also be used by the TBI medical community to advance TBI related research and for teams to monitor a players health throughout the season. Once a potential injury has been identified, the player should be removed from play to receive a neurocognitive test by a TBI trained physician or medical practitioner.
Key Components
Baseline Sensor Array
PlayerMD’s™ sensors measure an impact’s linear acceleration (G-forces) and rotational acceleration (radians per second), as well as monitoring a player’s body heat to prevent overheating. The sensors are the size of a grain of rice and encased in a specialized gel so they are invisible to the athlete wearing them.
TBI Medical Database
Throughout a game or practice, the biometric and impact data for any collisions that exceed 10Gs are transmitted to PlayerMD’s™ TBI Medical Database and stored for future use (coaching, medical, scouting, etc.).
A Game Changer
Understand the PlayerMD™ Unique Approach.
Many of the TBI identification systems currently available started as research projects and only use off-the-shelf accelerometer components and other products that are readily available. This approach has led to large, bulky equipment and high power consumption requiring large battery packs. Instead, Archetype took the ground-up approach to designing PlayerMD™ by redesigning off-the-shelf devices and technology, using discrete components with the end-application always in mind. This approach has led to PlayerMD’s™ sensor arrays being optimized in both size and power consumption and designed to target specific biometric applications.
Some key differentiators for PlayerMD™ include:
6 Degrees of freedom (6DOF)
Our sensor array measures the linear acceleration of an impact in G-forces and the rotational acceleration in radians per second. 6DOF enables physicians to better identify the specific location and nature of a TBI injury while helping physicians prescribe treatments that are targeted to the specific nature of the injury.
Predefined thresholds that are personalized for each player
Each player’s threshold will be different based on demographic (male or female, age, etc.), changes in physical characteristics (height, weight, etc.) or a player’s TBI-related medical history. PlayerMD will automatically adjust the threshold for each individual player throughout their career while allowing them to be manually adjusted as needed.
Centralized TBI medical database
All biometric and collision data associated with impacts of 10Gs or more is automatically captured into our centralized TBI Medical Database throughout the career of a player. This type of empirical data has not been available before and enables a new generation in TBI medical research:
•Physicians can make a better diagnosis if they know the timeline and nature of previous collisions.
•Medical researchers will have access to a robust set of empirical data to better understand how to prevent and treat TBI injuries.
•A player’s history is essential to setting individual thresholds.
•Coaches, athletic trainers and team physicians can now proactively manage a player’s health and performance throughout the season.
•Equipment manufacturers will be able to use this information to improve their designs and to help manufacture safer equipment.
Monitors for damage associated with frequent sub-concussive impacts
Sub-concussive impacts that occur in specific frequency patterns have been shown to also cause TBI level damage. A study performed in 2011 with 5,000 soccer players concluded that players who headed the ball more than 1,300 times during a season showed TBI level damage at the end of the season. Since PlayerMD™ tracks any impacts exceeding 10Gs, alerts are sent when predefined thresholds suspected of causing damage are occurring. This allows PlayerMD™ to offer sub-concussive impact analysis and guidance for soccer and other sports that has not yet been possible.
Monitors for overheating
PlayerMD™ continuously monitors for overheating which is a more frequent injury than concussions and has been recognized as a potential precursor to concussions.
Automatic notification of a potential injury
Parents, coaches and trainers will be automatically notified via text message or email to their phone or computer, regardless of location, whenever a player sustains an impact that exceeds their individual threshold or is in danger of overheating.
Sensors stay connected to the skull
The key to accurate readings is keeping the sensors connected to the skull throughout the collision. PlayerMD™ uses the combination of a skull cap or headband mount and a special gel to ensure the sensors stay connected to the skull throughout the impact.
Low power consumption
One of Archetype’s key design principals is to only use a subset of the biometric headgear’s available measurement capabilities to detect when an impact actually occurs which minimizes power consumption requirements. Once an impact exceeding 10Gs is detected, the biometric headgear switches to full data collection mode and will capture a full data log of all related information specific to that particular hit.
