Brightlamp LLC co-founder Kurtis Sluss shows how the company’s prototype app, called Collide, maps the pupil of the eye. Collide is being planned as the first app that can detect concussions that will be available to the public. (Photo provided by Brightlamp LLC)
Concussions and sports have long been an issue not just plaguing football, but many other sports to varying degrees. Concussions have always been complicated as even with the best medical expertise available on-site, they are very difficult to detect and often treat. With the impetus in sports to win and the symptoms difficult to diagnose, often times players re-enter the arena of competition and expose themselves to many health risks after suffering a concussion.
Lots of startups and larger companies have tried to figure out this issue, but it has remained complex and often has returned limited results. But Brightlamp LLC, a Purdue student-based startup, is looking to try and become the first company to offer a downloadable app that will be for public use that can detect concussions in real-time.
The app that Brightlamp is working on is called Collide, and it flashes a light from the smart device into the subject’s eye to measure the pupil dilation and constriction — the core aspects of helping evaluate a concussion on an athlete during competition. The app then determines the eye’s pixels in about five seconds and can answer to the possibility of a concussion suffered from an athlete in less than 30 seconds. ”
While this technology has been around for a few years, it has only been available to NFL medical personnel and other athletic doctors on a contractual basis. This technology, according to Brightlamp, has never been put on a smart device for widespread use.
“We want to open it to the public,” Kurtis Sluss, Brightlamp co-founder and chief executive officer, said.
“We just got word back that the utility patent is going to be expedited for us,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll hear back from the patent office close to May 2017.”
The app is currently in beta, but the company plans to continue to conduct tests with Lafayette, Ind.-area high school football teams in 2017, with the hope it can be released widespread in late 2017. In its early testing, the company has said it has been 98 percent accurate.
“We’re making every effort to validate this technology,” he said. “I realized that in recent years there’s been a looming problem in athletics.”
Sluss graduated from Purdue in May with dual bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry.
Brightlamp’s two co-founders went through Purdue Foundry’s LaunchBox program last spring and have been able to get advice through the entrepreneurs in residence. Purdue Foundry is an entrepreneurial accelerator for Purdue-affiliated entrepreneurs.
Eventually, Brightlamp wants to release two versions of the app. The first version would be for coaches and any others who want to store data of athletes so they can be tested regularly. The second version would be for the public and would have a focus on individual usage.
There has been a great race of sorts to try and get a grasp on the concussion issues within sports, and perhaps efforts solution can be currently found on a Big Ten college campus.
