Page 14 - Mobility Management, January/February 2021

ATP Series
FINDING
Manufacturers, regardless of what they make, increase quality or improve propulsion efficiency,
INSPIRATION
Recent Innovations for Ultralightweight Wheelchairs Have Come from New Sources
BY LAURIE WATANABE
design products based on what their customers tell them. Complex Rehab Technology (CRT) manufacturers want to be responsive to the consumers, clinicians, and suppliers who use, recommend, purchase and fit their products.
But CRT is complicated. Each person who uses a wheelchair has different goals, functional abili- ties, clinical needs, and progressions of conditions. End user success is the goal, but many answers come from outside the wheelchair industry.
Such is the case with ultralightweight chairs, expected to perform at such high levels while staying so minimal.
Pushing Design Envelopes
Cody Verrett, VP of Sales for Motion Composites, spoke of consumers’ expectations for the company to excel. “We spend a great deal of time listening to customer feedback, and we push the envelope with our engineering and quality teams to the benefit of the client,” he said. “We fully appreciate that you have to design with reim- bursement in mind, but we believe that when- ever we’re in a position to lower overall weight,
that’s the direction we want to go.
“That’s one of the things I love most about
working with Motion Composites. They’re really proud to be the lightest fully adjustable K0005 in each category, and we’re always applying our patented technologies that increase propulsion efficiency across the entire product line, from top to bottom. So everything we do is about lowering weight and increasing the rigidity of the folding frame, and of course, our [rigid] Apex as well. That’s where we spend all of our time, in those two areas, because they make such a difference to the consumer.”
Motion Composites has held a different perspective from the beginning. In an industry that typically holds up rigid-framed ultralights as the gold standard, Motion Composites first set its sights on designing the best folding-frame chair possible.
“They came to this challenge with no previous experience, not being part of the wheelchair industry,” Verrett said of company co-founders Eric Simoneau and David Gingras, who currently serve as CEO and COO, respectively.
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