From Ryerson to Rio

By Noella Ovid

RightBlue Labs, a sports technology startup developed at Ryerson’s DMZ, has created Logit—an app that helped athletes prevent injuries at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Logit is a wellness-monitoring suite that produces early warning signs of sickness or injury to notify the athlete and support staff before the issues occur.

The events Logit users competed in included swimming, wrestling and badminton. “Nineteen of the 22 medals that Canada won were used by athletes using the Logit system,” said Ronen Benin, CEO and founder.

Benin said the inspiration for the product came from his experience as a former competitive swimmer.

“When I swam I kept a training journal—a physical journal that I would review with my coaching staff whenever there was a crisis,” he said. “The problem was that the issue had already occurred at that point.”

Logit collects data on factors such as exertion, stress levels, hydration and nutrition to evaluate how well the user can recover and perform after exercise. The daily data it collects feeds into its algorithms. Over time, Logit automatically detects what causes individuals to have specific risk factors, like overtraining or overreaching, and shows their coaching staff what the percentage of risk is.

But, “It’s not just for Olympians,” said Benin. “We have a lot of amateur athletes who aren’t Olympians on there.”

The app offers a line of four systems—Logit Sport, Logit Fit, Logit Health and Logit Defense—to accurately forecast physical and mental health risks for users within sports organizations, fitness centers, medical practices and militaries.

Dan Shkolnik, director of business development, explained that while the average athlete may exercise a lot, they don’t monitor how they feel every day or after a highly exerting training session.

“Just by monitoring how you’re doing on a daily basis, you can actually take a look historically and see how you felt on certain days [and] see why you weren’t performing so well on certain days,” he said.

Shkolnik said Logit is doing well in the athletic market and has been validated by clients, including Hockey Canada, Skate Canada, Wrestling Canada Lutte and Badminton Canada. The company is currently working on developing new Logit systems in the future.

Benin said working at the DMZ helped RightBlue Labs start Logit by providing them with space and resources as well as introducing them to investors.