As a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Seattle Children’s Hospital, Sam Browd brought a swift end to the early athletic careers of innumerable youths across a myriad of sports due to concussions. Browd’s experience prematurely “retiring” children from athletics—most notably football—and the countless emotional conversations with parents made him question what could be done to address head injuries suffered by children while playing sports.
In 2013, Browd, an associate professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington, connected with Dave Marver and Per Reinhall—both of whom also had ties to the Seattle-based university and backgrounds in medical technology and mechanical engineering, respectively--about the systemic problem of concussions among athletes. Within a matter of weeks, Browd, Marver and Reinhall founded VICIS. Latin for “change,” the name VICIS fit the trio’s ambition: to reimagine the football helmet and reduce concussions in the sport.
After two years of development and just shy of $10 million in funding, VICIS launched its Zero1 helmet last month in collaboration with the University of Washington. Whether the helmet will effectively address the concussion quandary remains to be seen, but for VICIS’ credit—the helmet is unlike any other on the market.
Concussions and a helmet that buckles
Dominated by a couple of major players for decades (think: Riddell), the football helmet market was in need of a catalyst to spark innovation according to Marver, CEO of the fledgling startup. Likening the company to both Nike and Tesla, Marver says that VICIS is just what the helmet market needs. From its inception, VICIS threw traditional helmet technology out the window and started from scratch.
“Current helmets were never intended to deal with concussion,” explained Browd, chief medical officer of VICIS. “To take a product that is built for one purpose and to try to retrofit it to address concussion is a very challenging task.”
According to Browd, helmets were originally created to address skull fractures and to prevent subsequent subdural and epidural brain hemorrhages. At this, helmets are great but when it comes to concussions traditional football helmets most certainly miss the mark, he said. At the root of this issue is a lack of understanding of the injury. With more than 40 definitions today of what they are, concussions are controversial, rife with misconceptions and understanding is nascent at best, despite concussion awareness being at an all time high.
Geoff Manley, a leading concussion expert, explained that some of the most common misconceptions of concussions are that you have to lose consciousness and have direct trauma to the head to experience the injury, when in fact you don’t. Manley, Chief of Neurosurgery at San Francisco General Hospital and Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of California San Francisco, stressed that to understand concussions, one must understand that the brain and the skull move independently of one another.
“As the head moves back and forth, the brain can actually move within the skull and when this happens, you can get brain injuries,” he explained. During regular activity, the brain is protected by a fluid that keeps the soft organ from banging against the hard skull. Force to the head however, suffered by a direct hit, fall or collision, can send the brain crashing into the skull wall, causing a concussion even when no cuts or bruises are visible.
Recent evidence suggests that concussions are caused by rotational motion, rather than angular—or forward and backward—motion. The Zero1 helmet is designed to address not just linear forces acting upon football players’ heads but also angular and rotational acceleration. The idea is pretty simple and rooted in physics. If force is the product of mass and acceleration and you can’t change the mass of a football player (football players can deliver up to one ton of force), a helmet must address acceleration if it's going to impact force.
Unlike traditional helmets, the Zero1 has a soft outer shell that deforms on impact and a column-like inner structure intended to absorb impact and disperse its force omnidirectionally. There is also an additional rigid layer inside the helmet. As explained on the VICIS website, the helmet is much more similar to a car bumper than your typical helmet, deviating from the familiar hard outer shell and padding combination.
How much is head health worth?
With a $1,500 price tag—far exceeding the cost of other helmets on the market which go for anywhere between $150 and $400—the Zero1 is not a cheap helmet and VICIS is entering a market that has been dominated by a handful of companies—most notably Riddell--for decades. While other companies such as Xenith have tried to crack the helmet market, the price of the Zero1 helmet won’t make it easier for VICIS to grab market share, but Marver is not worried about the VICIS helmet making a mark.
“It is a superior design and that’s reflected in its value. You can’t really look at today’s pricing as rational. It is not value-based pricing. Shoulder pads cost more than today’s helmet,” said Marver. “We didn’t seek to make the least expensive helmet. We sought to develop the best helmet that we could, the safest helmet that we could.”
VICIS’ business plan calls for a measured rollout of the Zero1, which will first be made available to select NFL teams and collegiate football players. Marver said that the goal is to work with stakeholders—athletic trainers, coaches and athletes--at these elite levels of play to improve the helmet’s design before rolling it out to high school and youth football players.
“This is not our last helmet, this is our first helmet. We want to improve this helmet over time and we can do a much better job of that with the help of athletic trainers and equipment managers,” he said.
The Zero1 moniker is reflective of this rollout. VICIS plans to add modifiers as it releases new versions of the helmet such as the Zero2 and the Zero3. Marver said that the “Zero” represents the company’s commitment to “zero defects, zero excuses." Ultimately, VICIS plans to make the helmet more affordable and accessible for younger players next year.
Concussions, the NFL and the future of football as America’s sport
Among VICIS’ investors are prominent neurosurgeons, spine surgeons and former and current NFL players—including Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach. Possibly the most notable supporter of VICIS is the NFL itself.
The University of Washington--and VICIS by extension as its commercial partner (UW is a minority owner of VICIS)--was one of three grand prize winners in the second stage of the Head Health Initiative, a $60 million collaboration between the NFL, General Electric and Under Armour. To date, the university has received a total of $750,000 in funding toward the Zero1 helmet through the Head Health Initiative and has the opportunity to receive an additional $750,000 by meeting certain milestones.
High-profile concussions and the diagnoses of dozens of former professional football players with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)—a progressive and degenerative brain disease found in people who have suffered multiple concussions and other forms of brain trauma—has heightened scrutiny on the NFL and brought the public’s attention to the dangers of concussions, and as a result—football.
“I would go as far to say that your management of concussions in the NFL is going to be far, far better than the management of concussions in the community. I am pretty sure that you’re not going to get the same kind of structured, intense evaluation that people get on the sideline in an emergency department today,” said Manley.
There was a 58% increase in concussions during regular season NFL games last year, according to the 2015 NFL injury report, which was released just last week. Players reported a total of 271 concussions during the 2015 preseason and regular season, up from 261 in 2012. While the NFL questioned whether this increase could be linked to a spike in the reporting of concussions in a media conference call following the injury report’s release, the league does not deny the importance of addressing concussions in the sport. The NFL has implemented a series of rules changes over the years and taken other measures to make sure that players’ concussions are identified and treated by medical staff.
But concussion diagnosis can only help the public perception of football and the NFL to a limited extent. Concussion prevention is key to the longevity of the sport’s popularity, which has fallen over the past several years.
There are nearly six million tackle football participants in the United States, according to a 2015 Sports & Fitness Industry Association report. Between 2009 and 2014, participation in the sport fell by 3.7%--which may be associated with the growing awareness of the dangers of football. The NFL has a vested interest in keeping kids in the sport and to do so it must address the concussion problem. If VICIS’ Zero1 can be part of the solution, that certainly benefits the NFL. Regardless, a helmet will never be the panacea the league needs. Manley stressed that concussions will never be fully preventable.
“Are we going to be able to prevent every kind of injury? No, I don’t think so. That’s really why we need to better understand what the injuries are, what is the prognosis of people with these injuries and what are the factors that may contribute to patients having a good outcome, because we’re not going to be able to prevent all these injuries,” said Manley.
Another hurdle is getting players to wear the Zero1, if it does in fact prove to be a better helmet. In the fall of last year, Jeffrey Miller, the senior vice president of health and safety policy for the NFL, explained the process helmets must go through before they are worn on the field. According to Miller, all helmets must be independently tested and certified to the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) standard before players are able to wear them. He added that for the first time last year, the NFL put all NOCSAE approved helmets through laboratory testing for linear and rotational impacts.
“Then we took all of the results of [the tests] and then we gave those to the players, we put them on a poster and put them in the locker room—this helmet tested this way, this helmet tested this way—and we will do the same sort of thing as new helmets come onto the market,” explained Miller.
Miller added that if the Zero1 outperforms other helmets that are in the industry that the NFL will make sure that players know on a comparative basis how they test. He did not, however, say that players will be mandated to wear the Zero1 if this is the case.
