Interview
At this 12 months’s Linked North convention, the inaugural Begin-up Competitors noticed ten shortlisted start-ups take to the stage to current their enterprise to a panel of knowledgeable judges.
We caught up with Judith McMinn, founding father of profitable start-up Rezon, to study extra concerning the firm’s concussion-reducing headband and the way they’re integrating wearable mind electroencephalogram (EEG) know-how.
Judith McMinn, founding father of Rezon, celebrates profitable the Linked North startup competitors
Firstly, congratulations on profitable the startup competitors at this 12 months’s Linked North! Inform us slightly about your background and the way you got here up with the concept for Rezon?
Thanks!
My skilled background is in administration consulting, so I’m an issue solver by commerce, and the core thought behind Rezon is definitely to do with an issue I first encountered in childhood.
Like many individuals, I performed hockey as a toddler, and I typically puzzled why we protected our shins and our enamel, however not our mind. Protecting gear in sport is usually designed to guard the scalp, like scrum caps, or the top extra usually, like helmets, however little or no is completed to guard the mind itself.
In the previous few years there’s been a rising consciousness round mind damage in sport, significantly in American soccer with CTE (power traumatic encephalopathy) and, extra lately, in rugby. Figuring out concussions have been a significant focus for each the media and sporting our bodies, however its sub-concussions – small power impacts which are round 500 occasions extra frequent than concussions – which are additionally inflicting main lasting harm to the mind.
And there’s little being performed to guard in opposition to this.
What makes these sub-concussions so harmful?
Nicely, it’s actually vital to grasp the physicality of the mind. When a head affect happens, rotational forces trigger the mind to rotate contained in the cranium, and when the mind rotates it tears mind cells and tiny blood vessels, creating irritation.
Sub-concussions like this are brought on by only a quarter of the power of an everyday concussion and, not like full concussions, they’re fully asymptomatic.
Nonetheless, over time, with hundreds of impacts going down, the harm accumulates, contributing to neurological circumstances like early-onset dementia, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, reminiscence points, and rather more.
For instance, analysis tells us that in the event you’ve had 1,000,000 radians per second (the measure of rotational acceleration, i.e., rotational power) utilized to your mind, your threat of CTE is elevated by 22%. Head impacts in sport can typically be as much as 8,000–9,000 radians per second in a sport of soccer or rugby, so in lots of instances we’re speaking simply 100–200 impacts to go that threshold.
For reference, the common rugby participant will doubtless take1,500 sub-concussions a season! The typical soccer participant will take 600. So, the size of this challenge is gigantic, and for each participant, not simply these in skilled sport.
We knew in a short time that we wanted to discover a technique to scale back these rotational forces on the mind, and partially in sub-concussive impacts, so this was the main focus for our Halos headband.
Inform us extra concerning the Halos headband and the way it works?
In 2020, I began investigating mind well being extra deeply and started bringing collectively mind and manufacturing consultants to create an answer.
After two years of analysis, we created our Halos headband, which is a patented design of 9 layers of fabric. As the top is impacted, a few of these layers deform and transfer over one another, primarily lowering the vitality that’s delivered to the mind.
Our research have proven that carrying the Halos can scale back rotational forces by as much as 61%. We additionally had it examined by Virginia Tech, who gave it 5-stars after discovering it to scale back the danger of concussion by 74%.
We’ve labored laborious to make sure that the headscarf is sport agnostic, gender agonistic, and age agnostic. That’s actually vital, as a result of defending your mind wants to start out early in life. You don’t get early onset dementia simply since you turned up on the Manchester United Academy otherwise you began taking part in for Harlequins as a younger grownup. You get it since you began taking part in at three or 4 and have gathered harm since then.
In fact, each mind is exclusive. There are some individuals who can take hundreds and hundreds of impacts with no apparent penalties, and different individuals, sadly, the place the edge is far decrease. However we all know that the edge is decrease in girls, and we all know it’s decrease in kids, so these teams are significantly weak.
We’re a British firm fashioned in County Durham and we make our protecting headband right here within the UK. It’s absolutely recyclable and carbon footprint of the band is simply 0.4kg, so the equal of driving a mile within the automotive.
We introduced our protecting headband to market within the spring of 2022, and we are actually used 18 sports activities, various from the standard sports activities related to head impacts like rugby and soccer all the best way to extra unconventional sports activities like handball and quadball, which individuals would know as quidditch.
Now, with our US-partner Cogwear, we’re placing mind monitoring tech throughout the Halos to wearers to higher perceive their very own mind well being.
Inform us extra about this collaboration with Cogware
The Rezon Halos headband with neuroimaging tech from Cogwear
What Cogware have developed is the world’s first in-motion clinical-grade EEG know-how, which measures your mind exercise. EEG itself isn’t a brand new know-how, however it’s historically been extremely cumbersome, expensive and inconvenient – it often requires you to take a seat in a darkened room with an enormous swim cap on, instructed to not transfer, don’t sneeze, don’t discuss… Cogwear have miniaturised the know-how in order that it’s concerning the dimension of your thumb.
We’ve mixed this with our Halos design, that means that carrying the headscarf can give you medical grade mind knowledge in real-time. Individuals can baseline their mind well being within the consolation of their very own house or their very own altering room earlier than sport begins, in order that they’ll correctly assess the severity of impacts throughout the sport. This can enable us to diagnose concussions and sub-concussions as they occur, maintaining gamers safer and serving to to find out when or if they’re match to return to play.
All brains are totally different, and the easiest way to watch mind well being is to watch your mind in opposition to your mind. We’re giving individuals a real-time view of their mind exercise to allow them to make extra knowledgeable choices.
With the ability to measure brainwaves in motion like that is very thrilling! Are there another purposes for this know-how you’re at the moment exploring?
Nicely, what’s actually attention-grabbing about this know-how is that it may possibly measure not simply harm from collisions, however all types of efficiency parts. Brainwaves can reveal loads about our metallic state, from stress to focus ranges.
For instance, we’ve been doing work within the US focussed on golf, and we will now precisely predict the shot {that a} golfer’s going to take by monitoring the mind.
That’s the groundbreaking in relation to understanding sporting efficiency. Who has the very best psychological state to take the match-winning penalty kick? What does an elite athlete’s mind seem like? How does my mind deal with an intense coaching session? These are all questions this very refined neurotechnology will assist to reply and that has huge implications for the sporting world and past.
We envisage the Halos getting used for teaching and coaching, in addition to for cover.
Our focus has all the time been on unlocking the invisible world of the mind, and doing so in a versatile manner that fits the person. The mind is slowly changing into extra understood by way of refined neuroimaging, and I feel that is going to alter the dialog. Quickly individuals will start interested by their brains by way of weight-reduction plan or health, like another physique half.
Need to know extra about Rezon, mind well being, and concussion safety? Be a part of Judith and Rezon at Linked Britain 2024! Get your tickets now