As a former high school football star, a huge NFL fan, and the father of a young football player, William Reynolds Jr. has seen first-hand the impacts of dehydration on athletes.
Growing up, he said that monitoring hydration was not a common practice, and coaches were often strict about allowing water breaks. Now, years later, Reynolds is working on a wearable hydration patch to monitor hydration levels, as a method to prevent the fatigue, illness and even fatalities that can come with dehydration.
His Raleigh-based startup, called Onda Vision, will be presenting at CED’s Venture Connect in Raleigh on March 20-21.
“We’ve been working in the lab, behind closed doors, so this is the first time that we’re really getting out, sharing our work with other people,” Reynolds said.
Since receiving Phase I funding support from the National Science Foundation in 2019, Reynolds has been working on developing the technology. Onda Vision is currently in Phase II of the NSF funding process, where he has two years to move toward commercializing the product. The startup is a spinout from NC State.
The technology is a wearable device that sits inside an armband, where sensors detect relative changes in hydration.
When the user has more water content, electrodes measure less resistance within the body. When water content decreases and resistance increases, data is sent from the sensor’s micro computer to a central database with an alert of the change in hydration.
About every five to 10 minutes, this information would be sent to the coach or athletic trainer via a mobile app. Reynolds said that staggering the sending of information allows coaches to avoid getting bombarded with notifications, so the app can serve as a periodic check-in for athletes who are in need of water.
“Head, heat and heart” are the sources of the top fatalities for high school athletes, and Reynolds said while there is a big push to target “head” via concussion research and initiatives, he chose to target “heat.”
Reynolds describes the technology as non-invasive, especially compared to other forms of hydration monitoring like urine samples or needles. He said he hopes to keep the devices under $100 each.
Onda Vision plans to start by piloting their technology with high school football teams to use during practices. Eventually, the company will move on to other sports and potentially other industries, such as delivery driving or farming.
Reynolds, who is fluent in Portuguese, named his company Onda Vision after the Portuguese word for “wave”—drawing inspiration from the wavelength-based technology that the device uses. “Vision” comes from the idea that this technology allows users to understand what is going on inside their body.
Onda Vision licenses technology from North Carolina State University, where the lab is located. As the sole founder and fulltime team member of Onda Vision, Reynolds said he balances working in the lab with business management.
“It’s been a wonderful experience–the amount of information that I’ve shared, the connections that I’ve made,” he said.
Within the next six months, Onda Vision will be focusing on hydration studies, run out of Mississippi State University. Reynolds said he will also be talking with athletic trainers to gauge interest in beta testing.
