As awareness of concussions and other traumatic brain injuries increase in sports, especially football, professional sports leagues have implemented protocols and standards designed to help teams keep their players from further harm. But what about colleges, where the risk is the same but the resources and standards are often different?
The Pac-12 might have an answer. The conference last week announced a new effort under its Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Initiative: a Concussion Coordinating Unit. The unit, based at the University of Colorado Boulder, will be the Pac-12’s center for data collection and all administrative work, including a new equipment program.
That equipment program is the rollout of SyncThink’s EYE-SYNC, an eye-tracking technology that allows for 60-second results so that clinical decisions can be made, and it’s FDA-approved. According to the Pac-12, all member schools will receive the technology by January. Stanford has already begun using the technology, as have a number of colleges outside the Pac-12. Every participating school will receive two EYE-SYNC devices.
“This is a momentous day for both the Pac-12 Conference and SyncThink,” SyncThink founder Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, who is part of Stanford Healthcare, said in a statement. “The Pac-12 has always been about excellence both on the field and off, including their commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions for their members. The EYE-SYNC platform is the latest example, representing the new frontier of brain health and performance.”
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The Concussion Coordinating Unit that University of Colorado will head up is part of a larger NCAA effort to research, understand, and monitor concussions throughout college athletics. The overall program, CARE — Concussion Assessment Research and Education Consortium — is in partnership with the Department of Defense, according to the announcement.
The Concussion Coordinating Unit will lead research to create baseline and post-injury testing practices for student-athletes across all sports. University of Colorado-associated researchers will take the lead in assessing the data collected from the EYE-SYNC devices, which use virtual reality to track and analyze eye movements that would suggest visual impairment due to a brain injury.
“The Pac-12 Conference through our Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Initiative is committed to taking proactive steps to support the health and well-being of our student-athletes,” Woodie Dixon, Pac-12 general counsel and senior VP of business affairs, said in a statement. “We are excited to partner with SyncThink and their leading technologies to further research, understanding, diagnosis and treatment of traumatic head injuries. We are equally excited that the University of Colorado will play a central role in supporting our concussion data needs.”
“CU and other Pac-12 member universities have taken several steps in recent years to improve the health and wellness of our student-athletes,” CU Boulder Athletic Director Rick George said in a statement. “I am pleased that CU will take the lead on coordinating the study of concussion impacts and prevention so that we can continue to look out for the best interests of student-athletes here and across the nation.”
According to Colorado, all Pac-12 schools will be phased into the Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Concussion Coordinating Unit by 2020.