Page 18 - Mobility Management, October 2017

Permobil
The Manufacturer That Started with a Single Power Wheelchair Turns 50...and Eyes the Future
IS
Golden
It all began with Dr. Per Uddén. You know that name if you know
Permobil. Uddén, a physician, founded the power wheelchair company in his native Sweden in 1967. His influence permeates the company, as do his words that still guide Permobil today.
“Every person has the right to have his or her disability compensated as far as
By Laurie Watanabe
One Patient, One Wish
Jackson spoke to Mobility Management via Skype from Iceland. It’s a truly inter- national company now; during the inter- view, Jackson noted, “We’re in all parts of the world at this point.”
But he started the interview on a much smaller, more personal scale, by mentioning a single power wheelchair and the one patient who inspired it 50 years ago.
“He was a general doctor,” Jackson said, explaining Uddén and Permobil’s beginning. “He had a patient, and that patient wanted to go outside. Most of the chairs back then didn’t really have the right wheels or motors to go outside. They were basically manual chairs with power motors on them.”
Uddén approached the major wheel- chair manufacturer at the time, Everest & Jennings, for help, but was told its chairs weren’t designed for the outdoors. Undaunted, Uddén and a friend built a power wheelchair in the basement of a hospital. But Uddén didn’t stop there.
“I assume that once he made that one chair for his patient, he was getting a
lot of requests,” Jackson said. “And he knew that he could design and make chairs, but if you didn’t have funding for them, you wouldn’t be able to get them.
Per Uddén builds an early power chair.
possible by aids with the same technical standard as those we all use in our everyday lives,” Uddén said.
What might be less well known is one of the Uddén personality traits that Larry Jackson, president of Permobil Business Region Americas, said is his favorite. “He just didn’t take no for an answer,” Jackson said. “That’s what we like most about him.”
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The first Permobil power chair.
He believed this was a basic human right, that it was a responsibility of the government of Sweden to fund these power chairs.” Uddén, who was initially unable to get a meeting to discuss the matter, sat on the prime minister’s door- step until he was admitted.
“He went to the minister and fought for funding,” Jackson said. “As far as we know, it’s one of the first, if not the first example of funding for power chairs. He got the government of Sweden to fund power chairs in the late ’60s.”
This all began with one patient who just wanted to go outside.
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PHOTOS COURTESY PERMOBIL
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