Milestones

2011

• Simbex, Dartmouth Medical School, and Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth are awarded a two-year $1.3M grant from the National Operating Committee on Standards in Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) to expand their research collaboration on concussions in athletes. (Click here for the press release). The title of the research program is "Advancing the Understanding of Biomechanical Parameters Associated with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: An Evaluation of the Relationships Among Head Acceleration, Brain Tissue Mechanical Response, and Diffusion Imaging".
• Simbex is awarded a US patent for ActiveStep® fall prevention training system techology (US Patent #7,980,856). Additional patents are pending related to the technology, which is aimed at reducing the risk of falls in the elderly.
• Simbex receives an NIH SBIR FastTrack award to develop and commercialize ActiveStep-Sport technology, a sports performance and rehabilitation training system for improved neuromuscular control. The research and development effort will be performed in collaboration with Lynn Snyder-Mackler at the University of Delaware. Principal Investigators are Simbex Vice President Jeffrey Chu and President Richard Greenwald, PhD.
• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD, named to a three year term on the National Advisory Council for Child Health and Human Development (NACCHD) for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health.
• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD, and TREAT Program Manager, Joshua Nelson present an invited workshop at the Festival of international Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology (FICCDAT) on Assistive Technology Device Development and SBIR.
• Simbex Vice President of Engineering Jeffery Chu, MS presents an invited presentation entitled "Personnel Borne Blast Dosimeter" at the MOMRP Injury Biomechanics IPR Meeting.
• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD presents an invited presentation entitled "Concussive And Subconcussive Trauma in Football and Hockey" at the New Hampshire Medical Society in Concord, New Hampshire.
• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD presents a paper entitled "An Instrumented Glove to Measure Wrist Biomechanics During Snowboard Falls" at the 19th International Symposium on Ski Trauma and Skiing Safety Conference in Keystone, Colorado. Greenwald completes a six-year term as President of the International Society for Skiing Safety.

2010

• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD, presents an invited presentation entitled "Quantifying Head Impact Exposure in Ice Hockey" at a Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center sponsored conference entitled Ice Hockey Summit: Action on Concussion to be held in Rochester, Minnesota.
• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD, presents an invited presentation entitled "Concussive and Subconcussive Trauma in Football: Lessons from Helmet Sensors" at a Boston University School of Medicine conference entitled 2010 Head Trauma and the Athlete sponsored by The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, the Boston University School of Medicine Department of Neurosurgery, Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts, and Sports Legacy Institute and held in Waltham, Massachusetts.
• Simbex receives a $3.4M five year award to create the Center for Translation of Rehabilitation Engineering Advances and Technology (TREAT) by The National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR), part of the Eunice Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). TREAT will be one of seven NCMRR R24 infrastructure development sites nationwide intended to build research infrastructure by providing access to expertise, technologies, and resources from allied fields such as neurosciences, engineering, applied behavior, and the social sciences. Simbex will partner with The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI) at Dartmouth Medical School and with Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College on this Center. Rick Greenwald, PhD, Simbex founder and President, and Jon Lurie, MD, MS, director of Clinical Trials at TDI, are the Principal Investigators on the TREAT award.
• Simbex receives a US Army SBIR Phase II award to continue development of a next generation blast monitoring and alerting system for soldiers in the field. The technology will be used to help provide immediate feedback to field personnel about potentially injurious blasts and help enhance our understanding of blast effects and traumatic brain injury. Simbex Vice President Jeffrey J. Chu continues to lead this effort.
• Simbex receives an NIH SBIR Phase II award to continue development of HitAlert™ technology to expand the market for HIT System technology to high schools and youth football programs, and to enhance Simbex's product offerings in head impact biomechanics. Principal Investigator and Simbex Vice President Jeffrey J. Chu will lead the development effort.
• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD, presents an invited presentation entitled "Helmets, Head Impacts, and Concussions" at the National Neurotrauma Symposium 2010 meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• Frequency and Locations of Head Impact Exposures in Individual Collegiate Football Players, Crisco et al. appears in the Journal of Athletic Training. This manuscript documents for the first time head impact exposure frequency and head impact location for individual players, and as a function of game vs practice and player position at three NCAA Division 1 football programs.
• Simbex is awarded a US patent for ActiveStop™ dynamic body protector technology (US Patent Award #7837640) that will be applied to the development of wrist guards for snowboarding and other sports activities.

2009

• Simbex receives a US Army SBIR Phase I award for the development of a next generation blast monitoring and alerting system for soldiers in the field. The technology will be used to help provide immediate feedback to field personnel about potentially injurious blasts and help enhance our understanding of blast effects and traumatic brain injury. Simbex Vice President Jeffrey J. Chu will lead this effort.
• Jon Lurie, MD, MS, of Dartmouth Medical School receives 5 year award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for a study entitled "Randomized ActiveStep Clinical Evaluation (RACE)".  This prospective randomized comparative effectiveness trial will quantify the reduction in falls, reduction in fall severity, and duration of treatment effect achieved with ActiveStep compared to a control group.  The earlier pilot study, with Dr. Lurie as Principal Investigator, demonstrated a 29% reduction in falls with ActiveStep therapy compared to controls three months following completion of rehabilitation.
• ActiveStep® was demonstrated in Mark Grabiner's laboratory at University of Chicago-Illinois on Good Morning America in a segment titled "The Science of Elderly Slipping, Falling"


• Simbex receives an NIH SBIR Phase I award for development of HitAlert™ technology to expand the market for HIT System technology to high schools and youth football programs, and to enhance Simbex's product offerings in head impact biomechanics. Principal Investigator and Simbex Vice President Jeffrey J. Chu will lead the development effort.


• Simbex President Richard Greenwald, PhD, also President of the International Society for Skiing Safety (ISSS), presented a keynote lecture on Biomechanics of Alpine Sports Injuries to the 18th Congress of the ISSS in Garmisch-Partinkirchen, Germany. Greenwald also presented on the Biomechanics of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in Alpine Sports to the FIS Medical Commission.


• Simbex is awarded a patent for power management technology related to monitoring of physiological parameters in athletes.

2008

• Dartmouth Medical School researchers receive pilot grant for "Prospective Randomized ActiveStep™ Clinical Evaluation"


• Head Impact Severity Measures for Evaluation Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Risk Exposure, Greenwald et al. appears in Neurosurgery. Years of field head impact data collection lead researchers to some new conclusions that are presented in this April edition.


• ActiveStep™ clinical and research sites are now found in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois and Florida.


• Mike Stinebiser, sales professional from Hill-Rom, spearheads the commercialization efforts of the ActiveStep. His strategy is to begin in the Northeast and expand as production allows to other regions.

2007

• Simbex develops a single-user version of the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS™) marketed by Riddell as the Revolution IQ HITS™ Helmet. First units are delivered in December 2007.


• ActiveStep made its debut in a clinical setting at Masonicare, an integrated healthcare campus for the elderly in Wallingford, Connecticut.


• The United States Army contracts with Simbex to develop an in-helmet sensing system to measure blast effects with an aim to improve combat helmet design and reduce traumatic brain injuries among soldiers.


• Simbex is awarded a two-year Phase II STTR to continue development a Powered Ankle-Foot Prosthesis. Paolo Bonato, PhD of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston will collaborate on the project, overseeing field trials of the product as a significant step towards commercial release.


• A two-year joint project of Simbex and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center developed instrumented ski helmets that are being used to evaluate pediatric head injuries caused by winter sport accidents. Initial research results were presented at the International Society for Skiing Safety meeting in Aviemore, Scotland, May, 2007.


• An NIH-funded research project developed a novel design for protective wrist guards for winter sports. Initial results of on-snow testing were presented at the May meeting of the International Society for Skiing Safety.


• The NIH awards Simbex $3.6M for a 5 year, multi-center Bioengineering Research Partnership entitled "Biomechanical Basis of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI)." The Partnership includes Dartmouth Medical School Departments of Psychiatry and, of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Dartmouth Athletics, Rhode Island Hospital Department of Orthopaedics, Brown University Department of Athletics, Virginia Tech Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Athletics and Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

2006

• Simbex is awarded a Phase I STTR by the US Army to investigate and enhance a Powered Ankle-Foot Prosthesis with MIT's Biomechatronics Group, led by Professor Hugh Herr, at the MIT Media Lab.


• Simbex has partnered with Wayne State University researchers Cindy Bir, PhD and Marianne Wilhelm, PhD on projected funded by NOCSAE to study head impacts in soccer and amateur boxing. Prelimininary testing results are being presented at the World Congress of Biomechanics in Munich Germany in August 2006.


• Simbex has partnered with Tom McAllister, PhD, at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Medical School, and the Dartmouth Athletics department on a pilot study aimed at correlating biomechanical and clinical measures of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) in athletes using HIT System. Forty football and five ice hockey athletes were instrumented and monitored during the season. Pre- and post season functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were done on football and hockey players wearing instrumented helmets as well as non-contact sport athlete controls from the Dartmouth cross-country team. Clinical neuropsychology tests including both computerized ImPACT and pencil and paper tests. Expansion to hockey is important because it allows studies of men and women ' gender differences in MTBI have not been examined in depth. Results will be used as pilot data for submissions to NIH for follow-on funding and project expansion to include womens hockey and at multiple schools.


• The US Air Force awarded Simbex a Phase I SBIR to integrate Nano-Powered Head Impact Technology (nHIT) for an ultra-low power head impact monitor for field applications in combat environments. nHIT will be used to help understand the effects of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) on head injuries in the field.


• The National Institute of Aging at the National Institutes of Health awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) two-year grant for further development of the ActiveStep Fall Assessment and Fall Prevention System.

2005

• Simbex HIT System™ and Head Impact Biomechanics collects over 250,000 impacts, from more than 280 athletes during actual games and practices at 9 schools in 2005.


• The HIT System™ technology finds acceptance as an essential tool for studying head impact biomechanics and head protection product development. HIT System™ will be used by researchers in football, boxing, equestrian activities and soccer.


• To investigate incidence and severity of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in female atheletes, Simbex partnered with Wayne State University to instrument boxing head gear used by female amateur boxers. The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) provided a two-year grant to develop instrumented boxing headgear that produced the data required for this analysis.


• Simbex Performance and Rehab forms a joint-development project with the University of Illinois - Chicago. The goal of the partnership is to develop new technology to improve stability in the geriatric population.
  


• Richard M. Greenwald is named President of the International Society for Skiing Safety.


• Simbex HIT System™ is field-tested in a second sport ' Ice Hockey.


• Riddell client list of SRS users expands to nine, including 5 NCAA football programs and 4 high school football programs.


• Simbex creates separate business units. Aaron Buck is promoted to Activity Manager - HIT System™ and Head Impact Biomechanics and Alec Jessiman is hired to Activity Manager - Performance and Rehabilitation Products.


• HIT System™ technology is commercialized by Riddell under the name Riddell Sideline Response System™ (SRS™) and introduced at the American Football Coaches Association annual trade show and meeting.

2004

• Simbex is awarded a US Patent for HIT System technology.


• Simbex begins the second stage of prosthesis development with a project to revolutionize socket fitting, called the SVGS II.


• Simbex is awarded several NIH awards for research and product development of innovative injury prevention devices for the sports and geriatric populations.


• Jeffrey J. Chu is promoted to Director of Engineering.

2003

• The Active Contact System™ retrofit SR-80 is introduced at the O&P annual convention in San Diego, CA.


• The Hit System has its on-field debut. Virginia Tech, a NCAA Division I school, in conjunction with Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, implements the HIT System for the entire season, in both practices and games. The team records over 3,000 impacts during actual play and practices.


• US Patent obtained for the Active Contact System™ technology entitled. 'A Dynamic Variable Geometry Fitting System for Use with a Body Appliance.'


• IBEX™ is used in a study by world renowned researchers in Sydney, Australia to maintain strength and mobility in diabetic patients undergoing dialysis treatment.

2002

• The Active Contact System™ debuts at the Orthotics and Prosthetics (O&P) Industry national convention in Orlando, Florida, where Drs. Greenwald and Dean are featured speakers.


• In-Bed Exerciser, IBEX™ finishes its clinical trials are successfully concluded, additional research and development projects are launched.


• David W. Bertoni is added to the Simbex Board of Directors.

2001

• Further government research grants are awarded to Simbex for ongoing technology development in the areas of prosthetics, geriatric rehabilitation and injury prevention.


• Simbex refocuses the company on product development and chooses the IBEX™, Head Impact Technology and Smart Variable Geometry projects as the leading projects.


• Simbex debuts the In-Bed Exerciser or IBEX™ and is granted two patents for its technology.


• Simbex receives matching grant for additional R&D on the Active Contact System™.

2000

• Dr. Greenwald and Dean's tech incubator Synergy Innovations establish joint partnership.


• Simbex is founded as a New Hampshire Limited Liability Company and establishes headquarters/laboratory in converted mill building in Lebanon, NH.


• Jeffery J. Chu joins Simbex as Senior Engineer.


• David W. Bertoni joins Simbex as Director of Strategic Marketing Development.


• ' Simbex establishes board of directors: Drs. Dean & Greenwald; Sonny Kreitman, PhD, former director, NIH SBIR Program (retired); and Brad Meiseles, executive VP of WinMill Software.

1990-1999

• Robert C. Dean, Jr., ScD, believes a better fitting lower-limb prosthetic socket is possible.


• Dean & colleagues receive first research awards from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.