Page 22 - Mobility Management, November 2017

ATP Series
An Ultralight for All Seasons
on, you know how long I’ve been in this chair.’
“We’re a bit young in the industry when it comes to research,
unfortunately. So when a lot of these long-term folks were injured or grew up in a chair, the research just didn’t exist. Those folks are hitting their 50s and 60s now.”
Changing Consumers, Changing Technology
Industry veteran Alan Ludovici, senior project engineer at Ki Mobility, is one of those longtime self-propellers now facing the aging process.
“The past five years, with age, I’ve noticed that of course,
you gain weight,” he said. “Your strength goes down. I’m in my late 50s now, and I think the biggest thing is the excess weight gain, which is typical of somebody in their 50s. Your joints and muscles deteriorate as you get older. Combined with the weight, it’s extra taxing on your shoulders. Ten or 15 years ago, I was fine with my shoulders. But now, the reality is setting in for me. And I think almost everybody in a wheelchair is going to go through this process as they get older, especially in their 50s and 60s.
“The generation prior to mine, maybe people in the 1950s and 1960s, their life expectancy was much shorter after injury. Now people are living into their 50s and 60s.”
Consumers on the leading edge of this current generation have
already seen one mobility revolution, said Tom Whelan, VP of product development for Ki Mobility. “Post Vietnam, you had the advent of the lightweight wheelchair,” he noted, explaining that the invention of the Quadra and other lightweight models changed technology provision for spinal cord injury patients.
“Now you have this technology being developed that can change and can be fitted,” he said. “You start looking at applica- tions. Now, this explosion of technology facilitates an explosion of rehabilitation, which creates this explosion of inclusion, and it all feeds on itself. People are more active, they want to do more, there’s better technology, so rehabilitation changes and we’re teaching people how to use rigid-framed chairs and transfer independently and get the chairs into their cars themselves.”
One of the challenges now, Whelan said, is that while improved technology exists, not everyone knows how to apply it, including how to apply it to help aging ultralight users.
“The technology is actually still ahead,” he noted. “People
don’t know when to go from a 24" wheel to a 25" wheel. They don’t know when they need to change their seat-to-floor height
for transfers. There are pockets of people who know, but it’s not universally understood, applicable science that’s being used to apply technology to disability to optimize it, which forces the technology to grow, which improves lives. They all work together.”
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20 NOVEMBER 2017 | MOBILITY MANAGEMENT
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