HALO is a unique motorcycle helmet developed by Thermahelm, that delivers brain cooling to you, the end user, in the case of a head injury.
HALO activates at the moment of impact, mixing ammonium nitrate and saline in solution. This chemical reaction is endothermic; it absorbs heat energy. This cools the enclosed, injured brain of the HALO wearer for 30-45 minutes.
When Doctors discuss brain injury, the concept of the 'Golden Hour' reigns supreme. This refers to first sixty minutes following impact, when the extent of an injury is typically determined. With the correct, immediate medical care, the development of called 'secondary injury' around the focus of primary injury can minimised.
Unfortunately for you as a motorcyclist, there is an inherent gap in the chain of survival during this Golden Hour due to the delays in definitive medical care arriving to the accident scene. This eats into your Golden Hour, potentially affecting your mortality (chances of death) and morbidity (chance and extent of disability). Read more about brain injury.
When activated, HALO cools the wearer's head to combat the malignant heating effects (hyperthermia) caused by brain inflammation following traumatic brain injury. These effects contribute to the extending zone of secondary injury during the Golden Hour. Logically preventing brain hyperthermia improves your chances!
HALO also offsets the insulating, heating effect of a helmet that all riders will be familiar with - they are hot to wear! Without a HALO helmet, while protecting your head at the moment of impact, the insulating foam in your regular helmet could subsequently do more harm than good.
HALO has been proven to be at least as safe as existing helmet designs for passive safety - that is, it is designed to absorb as much of the impact of a collision as existing designs do.
HALO goes beyond this, since some features of the exterior shell's design are actually favourable compared to existing helmets.
HALO's completely unique difference however is that it goes on protecting you in the aftermath of the accident, through the brain cooling effects described above. By patent, no other helmet can provide this protection to you.
Thermahelm's mission is to put HALO's disruptive technology directly in the hands of the people who stand to benefit - you.
There are three other unique benefits:
Every HALO Helmet has a Kevlar reinforced carbon-fibre shell that confers two important properties: It has far superior abrasion-resistance compared to conventional polycarbonate designs, for protection against frictional, 'sliding' type injuries; it also dissipates greater impact energy through the woven structure of the hand-made carbon-fibre design. In other words, your head is better protected at the moment of impact.
The optional Ioniser Docking Station delivers a 45 minute cleaning, dehumidifying, deodorising and antibacterial cycle of warmed and ionised air into your helmet. It also provides a purpose designed repository for your helmet, protecting it from the potential for damage caused by leaving it inverted, on the floor, and so on.
An optional Emergency Beacon Transmitter can be fitted to your HALO Helmet, which activates at the moment of an accident. It transmits GPS-based location data via the mobile phone network to a base station. Using the established one-time telephone connection staff can determine with you whether medical attention is required, and despatch accordingly. Lastly, the mobile network can automatically inform up to ten nominated people of the event by text message.
No.
Thermahelm takes pride in providing the complete HALO package, incorporating our range of other innovative technologies, to ensure the highest standards of manufacturing and performance quality. We simply could not ensure the same standards retrofitting our ThermaCap technology into other manufacturers' helmets.
Thermahelm are committed to bringing innovation to our premium helmet range. This extends to competitive pricing, and options for personalisation to suit every need and pocket. However we promise that at no point will we compromise on safety in order to sell product.
| HALO Helmet incorporating ThermaCap brain cooling technology | £999.00 | |
| Optional extras: | Personalised carbon fibre colour | £ 99.00 |
| Emergency Beacon Transmitter | £ 299.00 | |
| Ioniser Docking Station | £ 499.00 |
Thermahelm is a start-up collaboration between the technology's inventor Mr Julian Joshua Preston Powers and scientists at the University of Sussex, England.
Thermahelm is a is a revolutionary new kind of intelligent brain cooling technology that counters dangerous overheating of the brain, from the moment a serious head injury occurs. The unique brain cooling action is a patented design, and has many potential life-saving applications. Presently this technology is being applied to motorcycle helmet design.
The University of Sussex, in the UK, are providing research and development facilities through the Sussex Innovation Centre. Collaborations with University and Industry scientists across various fields are optimising everything from its manufacturing process, to HALO's aerodynamics in use.
The UK Government, through the Global Entrepreneur Programme. Thermahelm technology was appraised and given Green Light Status as a 'Technology of Exceptional Potential'. Investment and worldwide promotion opportunities have been provided by the UK government to launch HALO.
Thermahelm is realising the promise of JJPP's patented concept in two key ways: Firstly, by raising motorcyclists' awareness of the importance of hyperthermic brain injury. Secondly by bringing to market the unique HALO motorcycle helmet as a solution for end users.
In the future Thermahelm will bring awareness and our innovative technologies to other areas of brain protection.
Thermahelm technology is highly adaptable to different needs. Initial efforts have resulted in the HALO motorcycle helmet, available now. Subsequent technology applications currently in development are:
If you are at risk of a head injury at home or on transport, or if your sport demands a helmet, the chances are that in the coming period Thermahelm will have announcements for products incorporating our technology relevant to you. Subscribe to our blog to stay updated.
The inspiration behind Thermahelm draws on a diverse literature, all of which converges on the concept of brain cooling:
There is considerable in-vitro work that supports cooling brain tissue to minimise hyperthermic inflammatory damage, by slowing enzyme cascades, reducing hyperaemia and oedema effects.
In vivo, the cooling of other organs is already in use to slow their metabolic rate in some routine clinical scenarios.
In the middle ground there are various animal studies of brain cooling for brain injury, as well as some small studies in humans that have shown variable degrees of benefit
The breadth of these sources conveys the biological plausibility of brain cooling for reducing traumatic brain injury in humans. What is currently lacking is a sufficiently large, 'real world' trial to establish and quantify efficacy.
Conducting a gold-standard randomised, placebo-controlled, adequately blinded trial of brain cooling is impossible, being arguably unethical: That we cannot crash motorcyclists, with and without HALO helmets, and observe the results in order to quantify the benefit that may be gained by Thermahelm wearers, is obvious.
As with the development of other potentially life-saving treatments, new chemotherapy drugs for example a result, the use of brain cooling in current clinical practice is typically as a 'last ditch' technology used in only the very worst cases. These studies can provide little sense of brain cooling's potential overall, nor are they generally powered sufficiently to probe for potential benefit.
Equally, whenever brain cooling is been applied, it is been achieved by such a diverse range of methods, and results vary to such degrees, that attempts to pool these heterogeneous data and discover an 'answer' fail to give a conclusive result.
It is important to note that the present lack of evidence is absolutely not the same as there being any positive evidence against the use of brain cooling.
This multinational trial is aimed to finally establish the clinical effectiveness of brain cooling, that is presently 'suspected'.
HALO itself may also provide the answer - If the product is as widely adopted as hoped, this will provide a great deal of data regarding a single, homogenous, practical, real-world application of brain cooling. The analysis of outcomes from accident statistics should allow quantification of the benefits of HALO.
Cochrane reviews summarise existing evidence for specific clinical scenarios.
As described above, the existing primary research evidence base is poor at least in part for ethical and practical reasons when conducting research, and the Cochrane reviews simply reflect this poor quality.
Equally in the case of brain cooling, the clinical scenarios generally envisaged apply to the actions of an emergency physician in a hospital setting, not an 'at the scene' immediate-response technology. Drawing comparisons between the HALO scenario and those that form the basis of the Cochrane reviews is therefore unfounded.
HALO technology is designed to keep the brain approximately normothermic in the face of increased heat production following traumatic brain injury, rather than to achieve substantial drops in brain temperature as is the more typical aim in specialist secondary care units. Consequently HALO technology aims to avoid positively dangerous hyperthermia, rather than produce uncontrolled, potentially damaging degrees of hypothermia.
The constituents of the cooling device itself are chemically unharmful, and the device itself has features to prevent the cooling medium coming into direct contact with the HALO wearer.
HALO technology is adjuvant to conventional helmet technology. HALO helmets have been proved as safe as existing helmet designs, in the conventional 'impact energy dissipation'sense. It then adds the potential additional benefit of brain cooling.
It is not claimed that every user or indeed even a majority of users will benefit from HALO technology, just as seatbelts or conventional helmets cannot help every accident victim. However it is expected that some users will benefit, and it is on this 'as good as if not better than your old helmet' basis that HALO helmets are being sold.