World Rugby has adopted a smart mouthguard developed at Cleveland Clinic to help detect head injuries.
The global rugby union will mandate the use of the Intelligent Mouthguard System for roughly 7,500 professional rugby players starting Jan. 1. The technology is licensed to Prevent Biometrics, a Cleveland Clinic Innovations spinoff.
The mouthguard records hits to the head, transmitting the data to an iPhone via Bluetooth to determine which players might need to be assessed for a concussion.
"The mandate by World Rugby is a paradigm shift in athlete safety and concussion care," said the technology's inventor, Edward Benzel, MD, chair emeritus of neurological surgery at Cleveland Clinic, in an Oct. 30 news release. "Using objective and quantitative ... data, coupled with clinical judgment, provides a game-changing system to better identify athletes in need of concussion assessment and will ultimately help keep athletes safer."
Dr. Benzel and colleagues found that a mouthguard was the optimal way to measure head impacts, more so than a helmet, headband or skin patch.