FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Richard M. Greenwald
Janyes R. Lemons
RIDDELL'S SIDELINE RESPONSE SYSTEM™ MAKES ITS COMMERCIAL DEBUT IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL Simbex's Head Impact Telemetry™ System makes its market debut, commercialized by football helmet powerhouse Riddell. Lebanon, NH - June 1, 2005 - Simbex LLC, a world-renowned research and development company in the field of active life improvement, today announced that its Head Impact Telemetry™ (HIT™) Technology has made its commercial debut in NCAA football. The product is marketed under the name Riddell Sideline Response System™ (SRS™) and is sold and distributed by Riddell to football programs around the country. The SRS™ is designed to help the football team's medical staff in the detection and monitoring of potentially injurious head impacts. "Riddell is proud to have taken the lead with this groundbreaking technology, which demonstrates our commitment to improving protection and which secures our position as the clear leader of innovation in protective equipment for football," said Jim Heidenreich, Vice President of Marketing at Riddell. The SRS™ incorporates advanced sensor and telemetry technology that is fitted in the player's Riddell helmet to provide vital, real-time, hit-by-hit information transmitted to a processor on the sidelines about the head impacts players receive during games and practices. If any impact is detected above a certain threshold level, the sideline medical staff is alerted by an alert pager message that indicates the player, time and magnitude of the impact. The first purchasers of the SRS™ system are Virginia Tech, University of North Carolina and University of Oklahoma. These schools also participated in the early, on-field trials and helped to shape the features and final design of the product. Virginia Tech was the first school to participate in the field trials of the system. "We were involved from the beginning with the first on-field testing of the SRS™. A lot has changed since the first prototypes were tested at our site. In the beginning we could only equip four players with the helmet sensors (called MX Encoders), but now the system is robust enough that we can outfit and monitor the entire team simultaneously," said Stefan Duma, Ph.D, Director of the Impact Biomechanics Laboratory at Virginia Tech. Simbex worked closely with both University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Oklahoma to participate in the expanding, on-field testing of the early Head Impact Telemetry system because of their keen interest in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) research. "Kevin M. Guskiewicz, PhD, ATC, from UNC has a well-deserved, national reputation for being a leader in concussion research, and we really wanted to get his input during the development," said Richard M. Greenwald, Ph.D, President of Simbex and co-inventor of the HIT System™. "And OU helped us understand the needs and challenges of sideline telemetry and the alert pagers that inform the medical staff of potentially injurious head impacts." This year's SRS™ product was enhanced from previous versions with the introduction of an Internet portal that will dish up each school's proprietary impact information to the school's authorized user. "The web-based interface is as simple as buying airline tickets on-line," said Research Engineer Jonathan Beckwith at Simbex. "Just enter the date you want and the player and hit 'GO'." Impact information is available by player, team, squad, position, day, practice session, etc. for any date range selected. The Sideline Response System™ is now available to interested football programs through Riddell sales after nearly ten years of research, testing and development. Much of the early HIT System development support came through the Small Business Innovation Research program at the National Institutes of Health, which endeavors to stimulate innovative research and development projects so they may become self-sustaining products that benefit society.
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