The device will help teams to monitor players and intervene when a suspected concussion injury has occurred.

Concussion is becoming a bigger and bigger issue nowadays in across a whole range of sports and a Castletroy College student has spotted this issue and come up with a very clever piece of equipment to help manage the problem fast.

Liam O’Mara, who is currently in second year, has created a device he’s called hel-mate and entered it into the BT Young Scientist Competition.

The miniature system would connect on to the back of a hurling helmet and measure the g-force of impacts as they happen to indicate whether the knock could cause a concussion or not.

Hel-mate works by using an accelerator that measures the movement of the head during training or a match whilst a microprocessor then interprets this data all the while a coach on the sideline can then use the systems app to see if the g-force is substantial enough for the player to be further looked at by the team’s medic.

The idea for the Young Scientist entry stemmed from O’Mara’s own personal experience when he sustained a knock to the head in a hurling match in which he wasn’t quite sure was strong enough to cause a concussion but knew it was still quite a sever collision.

This is the Limerick student’s second year at the prestigious competition having entered last year with his brother. Now totally on his own, Liam is currently working on his project to make sure everything is in perfect working order for when the competition comes around later on this month.

Some of the final touches the second year student has to apply is making the device a that bit smaller for hurling helmet’s, 3D printing a unit to fit the system into and then developing the code for the app that will relay all the vital information from Hel-mate itself.

You can watch Liam O’Mara explain his project below. Video credit The Journal.ie