Von Homer founded Hx Innovations in 2018 years after a traumatic knee injury halted his collegiate football career.
WILMINGTON – A devastating knee injury sparked the creation of a sports health tech company that uses camera technology and movement analytics to measure muscle activity, physical performance, and knee injury risk.
“My viewpoint of analyzing human movement was from actually experiencing an injury of my own – I got injured in college playing football, and tore every ligament in my knee during my freshman year,” said Von Homer, CEO of Hx Innovations.
And while Homer eventually played two years of collegiate football at Shenandoah University, the three years of rehab after his injury while playing for Western Maryland College in 2000 taught him a lot.
“What I realized during that time of rehabilitation is how injuries are only treated from one perspective, and that’s just joint kinematics (joint movement),” he said, “There are several different variables that we should be paying more attention to, that we can actually gain more information to predict an injury and even to help with the treatment of injury as well.”
About Hx Innovations
Hx Innovations aims to advance sports performance and health through cutting-edge technology and research, personal experiences, and a commitment to innovation fuel the company.
Those efforts are also supported by where the company is based: Chase Fieldhouse, whose tenants include the Delaware Blue Coats, Titus Sports Delaware, Nemours Children’s Health, multiple sports leagues and teams, tournaments, and an upcoming indoor track.
“This event ignited my passion for understanding human movement and preventing injuries,” Homer said. “Outside of my professional endeavors, I value spending time with my children and focus on solving problems through innovation, driven by a commitment to making a positive impact through technology and creativity.”
He founded Hx Innovations in 2018 through a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of $225,000.
The money was to commercialize a science that Homer has since patented but to also leverage another patent that he had on the market and the science he used to create that product.
“The science patented in 2018 was for a footwear product that was released and sold into the market,” Homer said.
The patented science is the ability to look at or collect different bio-markers during human movement to determine the risk for injury.
“Our goal is to enhance the quality of data collection to enable precise and reliable predictions,” Homer said. “We aim to provide companies with tools that support accurate data analysis, leverage artificial intelligence, and drive predictive analytics.”
The technology and algorithm can pick up any weaknesses or any perceived weaknesses over time if someone is doing the same movement.
“If you keep bending your arm over time, we can essentially predict when you would get tired, or there would be some type of breakdown in your elbow or your wrist, or something like that,” Homer said.
His background is in biomechanics and human movement, and his PhD is in computational neuroscience from Delaware State University.
Before starting the business, Homer worked as a footwear consultant and was hired by several footwear companies to do their biomechanics research.
That consists of seeing if the shoe will break down over time during a certain movement.
“Then the science that I employed received a lot of attention, and they really liked the metrics I brought in,” Homer said. “They wanted me to keep reproducing them, so it kind of happened by mistake.”
In the past few years, Hx Innovations has faced the challenge of establishing its presence in a competitive industry.
However, Homer said its dedication has led to significant accomplishments.
“We’ve collaborated with high-profile teams, including the Miami Heat, to test the efficacy of player performance and develop load management programs,” he said. “We’ve also partnered with several companies in the medical device industry, movement analytics industry, and human and sports performance sectors to utilize our data and advance their technologies.”
Most of the company’s customers are other technology companies collecting data from athletes, so Hx doesn’t deal with athletes directly.
They recently partnered with Netherlands-based T-Soles, a medical device company that uses sensor technology to collect information on the foot, and Spear HP, a company that works with the Department of Defense to collect information for human performance metrics for the armed services.
In his free time, Homer enjoys spending time with his three children, running, working out, and keeping up with other people’s innovations and idea development.
Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.
