As the debate over concussions in sport rages across the professional level, it’s flow on impact at the community level is one that sports tech company HITIQ (ASX: HIQ) foresees in the immediate future, as they set to increase their retail sales exposure through a collaboration with mouthguards manufacturer Shock Doctor. 

Those of us that have played competitive sports at a junior level will recall the annual pilgrimage to the pharmacy to purchase a mouthguard, boil it in water and bite down on it for two minutes to mould it. 

Through this collaboration, such a process could soon include embedded sensor technology which would add an extra layer of preventative data to players returning to the field after a high-impact collision. 

At this stage, collaboration between HITIQ and Shock Doctor is an exclusive non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which will undergo a development phase, followed by a commercialisation phase. 

The development phase is expected to take 6-9 months to complete where Shock Doctor will take the lead role in developing a product that can withstand the boiling process of the mouthguard that either already has a sensor chip integrated, or can be inserted without compromising performance, after boiling. 

“Partnering with the world leader in performance mouthguards to develop an off-the-shelf retail edition of our technology provides tremendous opportunities to scale into key international consumer markets,” said HITIQ CEO, Mike Vegar. 

“Shock Doctor’s sheer scale is unmatched and it’s a testament to our team that a company the size of Shock Doctor has the belief in our IP to tread this path.” 

HITIQ products are utilised across professional sports leagues around the world (and whose first commercial partner was the AFL), currently only services players at a professional and semi-professional level. With this collaboration, the Company is confident that it can access the community level where the North American market would be hugely lucrative due to their participation levels in contact-sport and population size. 

Once the collaboration progresses towards the commercialisation phase, HITIQ and Shock Doctor will negotiate in good faith the specifics around exclusivity and licencing where Shock Doctor’s position as the #1 mouthguard in the world would provide HITIQ with mass distribution potential. 

“For over 10 years Shock Doctor has closely monitored the origins and the evolution of mouthguard impact sensor technology.” said Shock Doctor Senior Vice Predident of Product Innovation, Jay Turkbas. 

“The expertise and advances of the Team at HITIQ impressed us. Not only with their technology, but with their commitment to provide the most advanced mouthguard impact sensor platform in the world. It made perfect sense to align our manufacturing, marketing and distribution expertise with HITIQ to work together to deliver best in class self-fit sensor mouthguards.” 

Beyond the AFL, HITIQ has been gathering momentum with commercial deals in place to provide their concussion management tech to Rugby League, Rugby Union, Ice Hockey, Lacrosse, MMA and American Football (particularly the NCAA) leagues. 

The collaboration with Shock Doctor comes just one week after concussions were the focal point of national debate when Geelong defender Tom Stewart was sent to the AFL Tribunal for his head-high bump on Richmond midfielder Dion Prestia (aka The Human Meatball). 

While Prestia was ruled out of the game immediately under the AFL’s concussions protocols, Stewart went on to likely be best-on-ground in the narrow 3 point Geelong victory, before being handed a 4 week suspension for his hit on Prestia whose long-term health is unknown as a result of the hit. 

For the quarter ended 31 March 2022, HITIQ reported its highest ever quarter of revenue when generating $339k which represented 74% of FY’21’s total annual revenue, in just three months.