At INNOSAFETY, a Dutch company focusing on safety and injury prevention, we believe that we can improve safety of the hand during sporting and working activities by truly understanding the function of the hand and the potential injuries due to forces.
Various devices have been designed in order to reduce the incidence of and the risk on getting a "skier's thumb" in ski accidents. Adjustments to the ski pole and pole clipping (like pole clipping directly into the glove) or strapless poles were developed.
The theory that losing the pole before the skier will hit the ground (without the pole in the hand), and therefore the mechanism of the pole forcing the thumb outwards is excluded will reduce theoretically the risk on UCL injuries.
Nevertheless the skier or snowboarder will hit the surface with high velocity (high energy trauma). If the hand is stretched out (natural reflex) the skier still has a significant chance that the thumb will be forced outwards due to hitting the ground, resulting in a fracture or UCL injury.
Our product can solve this issue and will be sold worldwide by Level Gloves, starting Autumn 2016.
More about our product
After injuring my own thumb in 2012 I realized the fragility and function of the thumb and hand. Allmost all handling in daily life got impaired after the injury. I started my search for a protection device and found out that there were no such things on the market. So I started to develop a protection device which protects the thumb without interfering the function and tactility of the thumb. In cooperation with Zautsen Industrial Design and Level Gloves we created the ultimate thumb protection. ~ Casper Smit
Chirurg Casper Smit liep drie jaar geleden een 'ski-duim' op. Maanden was hij uit de roulatie. Dit nooit meer, dacht hij. En zo ontpopte de Delftse arts zich tot uitvinder. Zijn duimbeschermer ligt volgend seizoen in de winkels. Denk je ski-ongeval, dan denk je been in het gips. Maar er is een letsel dat vaker voorkomt en misschien wel vervelender is: de zogenoemde ski-duim. Chirurg Casper Smit van het Delftse Reinier de Graaf ziekenhuis kan daarover meepraten. De arts verwondde drie jaar geleden zelf zijn duim bij het skiën. Click here to read more