HeatSense uses wearable sensors to improve heat safety in sports
HeatSense founder and CEO Melissa Fortenberry said her effort to advance heat safety in sports was born on a very hot day.
As a mom of three kids who play outdoor sports in Austin, Texas, heat safety and protection is often top of mind. But on this day, it was Fortenberry who felt the effects of the blistering Texas heat firsthand.
“I went to my son’s football game and I got sick from the heat in the stands,” she said. “I was dizzy. I was nauseous. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I really couldn’t recover from it during the game. Parents have always worried about the heat, but that was the first time my concern turned to fear for what was happening on the field. The kids were in pads and they were on turf which is a lot hotter.”Fortenberry, who comes from a technology and marketing background, then researched as much as she could and said she was not satisfied with how heat is managed today in athletics after realizing much of the response is based on what she described as “guesswork.”
“If you have any visible symptoms, you’re already sick. It’s too late. The guidelines come into play too late. They’re reactive, not proactive.”
— Melissa Fortenberry, HeatSense founder and CEO
According to her research, the guidelines for heat safety — from youth to professional sports — only address the symptoms of heat illness.
“If you have any visible symptoms, you’re already sick,” Fortenberry said. “It’s too late. The guidelines come into play too late. They’re reactive, not proactive.”
Additionally, she took issue with the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) metric used to determine safe playing conditions. WBGT is a measure of heat stress in direct sunlight, which factors in temperature, humidity, wind speed and sun angle.
“It’s a weather metric that’s being applied to every single athlete on the field, and every athlete shows up hydrated differently, acclimated differently, rested differently and with their own unique body every day,” Fortenberry said. “So, at the end of the day, to me, that’s guesswork. You’re applying a weather metric to everybody on the field.”
Finally, Fortenberry researched ways heat sickness is measured today, which include measuring core body temperature, and, according to the Mayo Clinic, the most accurate readings come from rectal thermometers.
“Immediately, my tech brain said, ‘That does not scale and technology has to be able to solve this,’” Fortenberry said. “That’s when my company was born, feeling like the status quo was not good enough.”
What is HeatSense and how does it work?
HeatSense uses a wearable sensor that measures core body temperature. The sensor itself is about the size of a quarter and can be worn on the bicep or across the chest.
Until recently, Fortenberry said the technology, which was developed in Switzerland in partnership with thermoregulation scientists, had only been used by professional endurance athletes to train in the heat, such as Ironman athletes or Tour de France cyclists.
The sensors deliver real-time core body temperature data that is compiled using an athlete app or team dashboard. The athlete app is meant for athletes in sports like golf or tennis — sports where phones can usually be nearby — or any club or youth sports. There are thresholds and alerts in the app, and Fortenberry said the goal is to see the trends that emerge.
“If you can proactively watch trends rise, then you know when to cool and rest so that you never get to the point where you’re having visible symptoms,” she said.
The team dashboard, on the other hand, can monitor more than 100 athletes on a field at the same time in real time. Field hubs are put on tripods around a field, allowing sensor data to get to the cloud.
According to Fortenberry, the HeatSense sensor has been validated against ingestible temperature capsules with accuracy within ±0.3-0.4 degrees Celsius across different activity levels, sexes and environmental conditions.
“Our goal is to get on the field this summer and get the feedback and then go from there,” she said.
Using the data
HeatSense is meant to provide insights into an athlete’s heat response as well as safe playing conditions, examining how heat affects the human body on an individual basis.
Theoretically, the data can then be used to adjust training programs and schedules to account for excessive heat, for example, or as a real-time safety tool that can alert coaching or training staff if there is a problem.
“I think of it as like an early-action system,” Fortenberry said. “For a football team, for example, there are a lot of players and not as many trainers, so the alert piece of the system is really important.”
The technology allows a user to enter as many phone numbers as needed, and those numbers will get a text alert if a player needs attention, for example.
“It’s the true visibility that’s so awesome to see,” Fortenberry said. “It’s validating and, in my opinion, it’s empowering for both the athlete and the staff. The staff is empowered to say, ‘Actually we do need to take a break.’ Or you have the confidence to keep pushing. And then for the athlete, they’re validated with potentially how they’re feeling and how much they think they can push.”
The technology is still in its early stages, but in June, the University of Alabama signed on to become HeatSense’s first customer and will adopt the sensors this August. Fortenberry’s goal is to reach three to five Division I college programs over the course of the summer.
“My ultimate goal is for (HeatSense) to be on every outdoor athlete, so we have big goals,” she said.
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