Simbex Press Release

SIMBEX AWARDED ARMY CONTRACT TO MEASURE HEAD ACCELERATION DURING BLAST EVENTS

Simbex will supply testing equipment to the US Army to detect traumatic and mild traumatic brain injury; the so called “signature injury” in Iraq.

Lebanon, NH - August 24, 2007 - Simbex, a Lebanon NH based research and development company, was awarded a $932K Army contract to deliver twenty Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) System technology enabled helmets for testing and evaluation purposes.

There is a great potential for soldiers who have been deployed to receive multiple head injuries that go unnoticed until they begin having short-term memory problems or changes in attitude. The Army is hoping to find a technology to aid in determining the amount of head trauma soldiers receive while in combat. Now when soldiers are in battle and come under fire, unless they are visibly wounded or are exhibiting extensive, non-visible head trauma, they often stay in the fight.

The HIT System has sensors that are in fit into the helmet that measure the amount of force dealt to the head. This information could be recorded into soldiers’ medical history, so that in the event of mental or physical problems down the road the medical history will have a list of head related impact or blast events that were sustained by the soldier.

"There has been tremendous interest in better understanding the biomechanics of brain injury following both blunt trauma and blast events in the military theatre", said Richard Greenwald, PhD, President and Founder of Simbex. "We are confident that HIT System technology can be an important piece of the puzzle in the overall strategy to protect our soldiers against significant brain injuries."

HIT System technology has been utilized in sports applications for several years. Small sensors and a microcomputer are mounted inside the helmet to monitor rapid head movements caused by impact. Used by hundreds of college and high school football players, HIT System enabled helmets have recorded more than 370,000 impacts in football. For military applications, the technology is expanded to deal with blast related head movements that are quicker and often at higher levels than blunt trauma. The initial research and development of the system was initially funded by the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research in the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health, and subsequently by the US Air Force under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award.

"Simbex is honored to be selected by the Army to demonstrate this technology for field use in combat helmets", said Jeff Chu, Simbex VP of Engineering. "We hope that the knowledge gained from these tests and subsequently on the battlefield can lead to improvements in soldier protective equipment and medical care."

About Simbex LLC
Simbex is a research and product development company whose core expertise is biomechanical feedback systems. The company develops marketable products and solutions from emerging technologies for active life improvement in the areas of prosthetics, sports injury prevention and rehabilitation. The founders are internationally recognized experts in their fields and have decades of experience in the area of functional evaluation and efficacy assessment of complex biomechanical systems for the sporting goods, orthopedic and exercise equipment industries. The research branch of the company is supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense. For further information about Simbex, visit the company's Web site at http://www.simbex.com.