I'm a physician who does basic lab research but not a neurologist and do not do any research on trauma/brain injury etc, so take this for what it's worth.
I looked at the materials on the Q30 website and here are my three takeaways
- good preclinical data in animal models so the premise for studying in humans is good
- all of the human data that they presented are what we'd call 'surrogate outcomes'. This means that they did not demonstrate improvements in outcomes that we'd consider to be important in the real world (concussions, TBI diagnoses, etc) but rather improvements in MRI scan findings. It is currently difficult to know whether these MRI findings will translate to better real-world outcomes, but these things may take years if not decades to manifest.
- there were no Q30 data presented showing that their device actually reduced the risk of concussions. They tested their device in hockey/football/soccer players over significant amounts of time (a full season of soccer, for example) so one would think that if there had been a significant reduction in concussion risk that the company would be very eager to report that.
Another gap in our knowledge as
@raytseng implies is, what is the risk of subconcussive brain injury among recreational skiers? Not an expert here -- found one study that reported a 9% prevalence of having had at least one medical professional-diagnosed concussion related to skiing/snowboarding. Nearly 22% of males reported having sustained a suspected concussion (with all of the limitations that come with self-reported survey research). But I couldn't find anything about subconcussive injury.
My two cents on this is that there aren't enough data yet to judge the effectiveness of the Q30 device and on the risk of subconcussive TBI in skiers.