Page 26 - Mobility Management, November/December 2021

ZIPPIE Sphynx: Giving Families Exactly What They Need
While Complex Rehab Technology wheelchairs can be fine tuned to their users’ needs, there are still groups of underserved consumers... and as a result, underserved families as well.
Sunrise Medical’s new ZIPPIE Sphynx was designed to address the clinical needs, goals, and activities of both.
Transportability in the Real World
The Sphynx has seat widths of 10", 12", 14", 16", and 18". Seat depths go from 10" to 19" standard, including 5" of built-in growth. A 14x14" chair grows to a 19" seat depth without replacement parts, said Kelsey DiGiacomo, Sunrise Medical’s Pediatric Product Manager.
But here’s where the Sphynx gets really interesting: Its weight capacity is 250 lbs., thus accommodating older kids and even adults while maintaining true portability.
In fact, that population of teens and young adults, DiGiacomo said, “was really what drove a lot of the engi- neering aspects. We’d been hearing from our clinical advisory board, as well as parents who utilize the [ZIPPIE] Voyage and some of our other products, that realistically, transportability is hard to achieve with this type of adap- tive stroller or even our pediatric wheelchairs.
“Parents or caregivers of children with disabilities have a lot on their hands, literally. They’re dealing with children who have complex medical support accessories, or they’ve got additional children who need attention. So being able to have something that folds into a standard size, even a compact car-sized trunk, without dissem- bling all of the seating system really improves not only
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functionality for the child, but for their family as a whole.” The Sphynx folds clamshell style in seconds (watch
it on the sunrisemedical.com Web site). Seating and accessories stay on the frame, so folding the Sphynx is “something that [a caregiver] can do even with a child in their arms, in a quick, one-step motion,” DiGiacomo said. “That was something our clinical advisory board drove home to us: We don’t want to compromise seating and positioning, but what parents and caregivers want is something they can fold on the fly to get out the door.”
The Sphynx’s transport weight is 30 lbs. “We did want
to prioritize the overall weight of the system,” DiGiacomo said. “We’ve heard, It’s great if the frame itself is transport- able when you remove the rear wheels or the legrest or the upholstery, but it ends up still being heavy when you think about it as a complete system. So we wanted to make it compact folding, but also as lightweight as we possibly could without compromising strength.”
Dialing in the Best Positioning
The Sphynx offers static tilt settings of 10°, 20°, and 30° “that could be adjusted as the child’s needs change over time,” DiGiacomo noted. “So a child could utilize a 30° seat tilt, but say they undergo scoliosis surgery and have much better trunk support. Being able to have that 10° option — just a quick, almost two-minute adjustment — to upgrade their seat tilt to that 10° position really improves functional access to participation.”
While the tilt isn’t meant to be frequently adjusted — “It’s more to accommodate the child’s needs over time,” DiGiacomo said — caregivers can use recline (85-100°) to reposition as needed. “If they’re in a classroom and they get fatigued, the teacher or clinician could adjust that recline on the fly,” DiGiacomo said. “It provides quick-adjust accommodation for a child who might need the benefit of opening that seat-to-back angle.”
The Sphynx accommodates a wide range of posi- tioning components, DiGiacomo added: “The voice of the clinician was asking us to have that transport- able, almost adaptive stroller-looking frame, but they didn’t want to compromise with just soft, lightweight positioning options. They wanted more complex ante- rior trunk supports and lower-body supports. So we’ve got trunk supports, pelvic support options, hip guides,
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