HEADCHECK Health

06/18/2026

Congrats to Delta Wild Hockey Academy on another safe and successful season!

"HEADCHECK provides our academy with a streamlined, reliable mechanism to assess and manage concussions throughout the season." said academy President Ian Gallagher. "It’s an excellent tool to keep our medical staff, coaches, and trainers organized, allowing our staff to make confident decisions on our athletes to safely return-to-play."

The Delta Hockey Academy is a premier Canadian student-athlete training program based in Delta, British Columbia. It integrates elite on-ice hockey development with academics (in partnership with North Delta Secondary School) to help youth players transition to collegiate, junior, and professional levels. To learn more, visit https://na3.hubs.ly/y0w9qZ0

06/16/2026

New research suggests concussion risk in women’s sports may not be where many people expect it.

In a new study (Whelan et http://al., 2026) analyzing six years of data from Pac-12 athletes, researchers found that women’s volleyball had the highest concussion rate of any sport studied, even higher than soccer, basketball, and water polo. The findings challenge the idea that concussion risk is driven solely by how much contact a sport involves and highlight the need for sport-specific prevention strategies.

Full study:

06/11/2026

Myth: you'd know right away if an athlete had a concussion.
Reality? Symptoms can be delayed by hours, days, even weeks, and they look different on everyone. Here's what to watch for ⬇️

😵‍💫 PHYSICAL SIGNS
Head pressure & headache
Slow reaction times
Sensitivity to noise & light
Dazed look
Dizziness
Loss of consciousness
Blurred/double vision
Balance issues
Nausea/vomiting
Drowsiness

😴 SLEEP & BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES
Irritability
Sadness/depression
Decreased interest in social activities
Involuntary/uncontrollable outbursts
Anxiety or nervousness
Sleeping more or less than usual
Trouble falling asleep

🧠 MEMORY & THINKING PROBLEMS
Attention or concentration problems
Feeling slowed down
Foggy or groggy
Problems with short or long-term memory
Trouble thinking clearly

Early recognition is the first step to a safe recovery. If you or someone around you shows these signs, remove them from the activity immediately and get evaluated by a healthcare professional.

06/09/2026

New research from the University of South Florida (Tran et al., 2026) points to a future where machine learning gives medical professionals and athletic therapists better information at the moments that matter most.

Studying 217 athletes, researchers found that AI models could predict, with up to 84% accuracy, whether a concussion would take more or less than 30 days to resolve. Two findings stood out:

1. Athletes who developed a headache during vision and eye-movement testing were more likely to face longer recoveries

2. Athletes who received treatment after their first clinic visit were more likely to recover within 30 days

The researchers are clear that this is not ready for clinical use. But the direction is meaningful. Tools like this could one day help clinicians make more personalized Return to Sport decisions, with more confidence and more evidence behind them.

Full study:

To evaluate whether integrating longitudinal clinical data improves machine learning (ML)-based prediction of time to medical clearance following sport-related concussion (SRC) and to identify clinical features most strongly associated with ...

06/05/2026

Did you know? Once an RTP is complete, you can download a full RTP Summary PDF directly from the Athlete History tab.

This summary gives you:

◾ Total RTP duration
◾ All tests completed during recovery
◾ All notes logged along the way
◾ Stage-by-stage activity guidelines
◾ Confirmation that every requirement was met

It’s a clean, comprehensive snapshot of the entire recovery process, ready for internal review, compliance needs, or record-keeping.

06/03/2026

Better data. Better decisions. Fewer injuries. CJFL's Prairie Football Conference President Randy O'Shaughnessy recently joined our podcast to share how using HEADCHECK has helped his teams improve concussion protocol compliance, spot trends, and better protect athletes.

Listen now 🎧 https://na3.hubs.ly/y0vmYF0

05/27/2026

Can you trust AI chatbots for concussion advice? 🤔

People turn to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools for health answers every day, but are those answers actually trustworthy?

A new study (Tykocki, 2026) put 5 of the biggest AI chatbots to the test on concussion questions.

The good news: the medical information was mostly accurate.

The bad news: it was written at a level that most patients would struggle to understand. Think dense, jargon-heavy paragraphs when what people need is clear, simple guidance.

No AI passed the bar for truly accessible health communication, and none should be used as a standalone source of medical advice.

Full study here:

Generative AI is rapidly entering patient education workflows, yet its safety profile for concussion management remains undefined. Utilizing the CHART framework, this cross-sectional audit assessed five platforms, specifically isolating retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures against stan...

05/20/2026

"I didn't want to lose playing time."

That's the #1 reason kids as young as eight give for hiding a suspected concussion and staying in the game.

A study (Bretzin et al., 2022) found that about 1 in 8 youth athletes kept a suspected concussion to themselves, and the pressure they felt mirrors what we see in high school and college athletes.

The culture starts at a younger age than we may have thought. Are we addressing it early enough?

Full study ➡️

Ten percent of youth athletes self-reported at least 1 diagnosed SRC. However, they also described continuing to practice or play in a game after a suspected SRC. Reasons for nondisclosure at this age were similar to those reported in high school and collegiate athletes. Recent researchers suggested...

05/15/2026

The SNS - Sports Neuropsychology Society Concussion & Brain Health Symposium is one of our favourite weekends of the year! Find us at our booth and let's talk about how we're helping teams manage concussions the right way.

05/14/2026

New episode of HEADCHECK Health Talks is live!🎙️

We sat down with Randy O'Shaughnessy, President of the Canadian Junior Football League (CJFL)'s Prairie Football Conference and a 25-year junior football veteran, to talk leadership, player safety, and what real culture change looks like in a collision sport.

Randy shares how league-wide concussion data helped one PFC team trace a spike in head injuries back to a single practice drill — and cut their numbers in half once they stopped running it.

A must-listen for anyone in sport administration, coaching, or athlete safety!

Listen now 🎧 https://na3.hubs.ly/y0sZ7y0