Page 26 - Mobility Management, January/February 2021

Sunrise Medical Nitrum: Evolution Meets Revolution
Ultralightweight wheelchairs are known for their exactitude. Every ounce of weight or every quarter inch of adjustment can have a big impact when
the engine powering a wheelchair is the human body. Sunrise Medical’s new Nitrum wheelchair is an evolu-
tion of tried-and-true QUICKIE ultralightweight engi- neering. But in other ways, it displays rather revolutionary improvements for active ultralight users.
Taking Its Place in the QUICKIE Lineup
In explaining the Nitrum’s pedigree, Jesus Ibarra, Sunrise’s Product Manager/Adult Manual, noted the brand’s venerable history: “QUICKIE really represents a long tradition of manual wheelchairs. We’ve got more than 30 years now: We research, we listen, we always try to deliver superior-quality products to the market.”
For the rigid Nitrum, Ibarra added, QUICKIE built on past successes while also expecting Nitrum to set a higher bar. “We took the best of everything about our older products, and the voice of the customer, and we combined them,” Ibarra said. “That’s the Nitrum: lightest in class, a lot of user innovations like a one-arm fold mechanism, and a new patented caster mechanism.”
The Nitrum, which will obsolete the QUICKIE Q7 and QR7, was launched in Europe prior to being launched in December in the United States.
“The basis of most of these design innovations was feedback from wheelchair users,” Ibarra noted. “Our Global Product Management team are both wheelchair users, so all those little adjustments, those little things that people say they would like to have, come from people actually riding these chairs.”
Improving Transportability in Multiple Ways
Inevitably, one of the first questions about any ultralight chair is transport weight. Nitrum weighs 10.8 lbs., or 9.7 lbs. without wheel locks. The standard configuration weight, including wheels, is 18.3 lbs.
Ibarra acknowledged that less weight to propel is always significant, but he also sees weight as important
26 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 | MOBILITY MANAGEMENT
to the transport process. “If I can save somebody two to three seconds when folding their chair or removing their wheels or transferring in and out of their car, that’s just part of our original intent of improving people’s lives,” he said. “To come up with even a lighter aluminum solution, we had to look elsewhere.”
That meant seeking new possibilities from new mate- rials. “We started with 7000 series [aluminum] and ShapeLoc technology with the original Q7,” Ibarra said. “We upgraded a little bit with 7R. But we had to come up with something totally different for the Nitrum, and that’s why we dove into the next generation of 7000 series aluminum. The 7020 series aluminum has given us extra strength, and that thin wall of aluminum can still give us the strength that we need for efficient propulsion.”
The Translation to Functionality
For Angie Kiger, M.Ed, CTRS, ATP/SMS, Clinical Strategy & Education Manager for Sunrise Medical, the success of a new ultralightweight wheelchair comes down to how it will improve a client’s function.
The customer demographic for Nitrum, Kiger said, is “your high-end, dialed-in sort of user. Not that a new user couldn’t use this chair, but this is really for that person who is super active, super busy, always on the go, and wants that ultralightweight feel, wants the rigidity of it.”
Among Kiger’s favorite features is Nitrum’s new one-handed Twist-Lock system: Grab the bar, twist it
to release its position, then fold the backrest down for transport. “The nice thing about the Twist-Lock is you
can do that with one hand: You literally just twist and have it fold down,” Kiger said. “And it gives you a nice robust area to get a good grip on the chair when you’re doing transfers. Look at the different folding mechanisms for the back now. It’s really designed so somebody
can easily transfer out of their vehicle a lot faster, a lot easier, whether you’re using the solid bar foldback or the Twist-Lock.”
Kiger is also a fan of Nitrum’s patented caster system: “You can make three different kinds of adjustments, so
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