Research & Validation

HQ Baseline is a commercial digital concussion baseline product built by Headquarters Health. This page points to the published sport concussion literature that informs our approach, describes our validation work, and explains how to engage our research team.

Important: HQ Baseline is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by the Concussion in Sport Group (CISG). HQ Baseline is not the SCAT6 and does not represent itself as a SCAT6 implementation. The references below are cited as third-party literature, not as alignment claims.

Relevant published literature

• 2023 CISG Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport. Patricios et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2023. The current international consensus on sport concussion management.
• Sport Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT6). Published open-access in BJSM, 2023. The paper SCAT6 form and its child counterpart (Child SCAT6) are owned by the CISG and freely downloadable from BJSM.
• Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC). McCrea et al., 1998. The brief cognitive battery that underpins many modern sport-concussion cognitive assessments.
• Modified Balance Error Scoring System (mBESS). Guskiewicz et al., 2001. The validated postural-sway protocol that underlies mobile balance assessment.
• Inertial-sensor-based postural sway measurement. Multiple studies (2015–2022) validating smartphone accelerometer-based sway measurement against force-plate gold standards.

HQ Baseline modules

HQ Baseline delivers a seven-module self-administered concussion baseline. Each module draws on the published sport-concussion literature listed above:

• Symptom evaluation — PCSS-style symptom rating with subtype tagging for cognitive, vestibular, ocular, and cervical domains.
• Orientation — time, place, and situational orientation questions.
• Immediate memory — five-word list recall, voice-scored.
• Concentration — digit span backward and months of the year in reverse, voice-scored.
• Balance — double-leg, single-leg, and tandem stances, scored by smartphone accelerometer and gyroscope.
• Tandem gait — three-meter heel-to-toe walk, timed by motion sensors.
• Delayed recall + simple reaction — end-of-test word recall and a timed touch-response task.

Validation status

HQ Baseline’s motion-scored balance modules and voice-scored cognitive modules are designed to produce objective, reproducible scores suitable for within-athlete comparison over time. Internal reproducibility studies are underway and will be published as they complete.

Research partnerships

We work with academic sports medicine programs on concussion research, including longitudinal cohort studies and validation work. If you’re interested in a research partnership, email research@headquarters.health.