Startup of the week:
Who they are: PRIVIT
What they do: Their app seeks to keep young athletes safer by helping coaches and trainers report and properly treat concussions and other injuries and medical conditions.
Why it’s cool: There’s been plenty of buzz recently about the dangers of concussions in impact sports — including the link between playing in the NFL. and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy. But it’s a problem for kids too. Nearly one in five U.S. teens — and one in three who play contact sports — say they’ve experienced a concussion, Reuters reports. Those hits to the head can have long-term impacts on young athletes, affecting their health, memory and learning — and can even be lethal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The dangers increase when athletes are sent back into a game too quickly, and suffer a repeat blow before they fully recover.
PRIVIT is trying to help protect kids’ heads — and other body parts too — with an app called Sideline. The app lets coaches, trainers and medical personnel quickly access a students’ medical history in order to help determine the best course of action when a student is injured. For example, if a young player suffers his or her second concussion in a short period of time, Sideline would know and alert the coach, who then won’t be at risk of accidentally putting the child back in the game too soon.
The app also lets coaches quickly call a child’s emergency contacts, and send messages to parents alerting them of injuries. Or the coach can use the app to refer a child to a medical professional for further treatment.
“Concussions are still going to occur,” said PRIVIT associate Russell Goodwin. “We help make teams and volunteer coaches and trainers or medical personnel ready so they can be responsible for taking care of the management of a concussion.”
The Sideline app works with the PRIVIT platform, which streamlines access to student athletes’ health records. The online platform keeps track of the physical exams, consent forms and other documents students need to be eligible for sports participation.
Sideline launched at the beginning of this year, and the PRIVIT platform has been around since the fall of 2016.
Where they stand: About 700 high schools and colleges use PRIVIT, including Stanford, which requires all its student athletes to register with PRIVIT before participating in sports. In the future, the company is planning to expand beyond athletics. They hope to create a platform that helps high schools streamline the collection of permission slips for field trips.
To learn more visit privitsideline.strikingly.com.
What will they think of next?
Want to send someone a gift? Can’t be bothered to go and pick it out yourself? Not everyone can afford an assistant to make that shopping trip for them. But a San Francisco-based startup has come up with an artificially intelligent solution called EvaBot. The bot caters to businesspeople, and helps them send personalized gifts to their clients without the hassle.
To use the service, copy EvaBot in an email, and the bot then chats with the gift recipient to learn about his or her personal tastes. Then the bot picks a present, and has it shipped to the customer. And you get all the credit.
To learn more visit: evabot.ai.
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