A group of students has developed a new way to operate a wheelchair for people who lack the motor skills needed to operate a joystick. By working with patients at University Hospital and partnering with engineers, they have developed a device to better help people operate and steer their wheelchairs.
This group of people is limited to two options for getting around. They can rely on someone to push them, or they can use a sip and puff system in which the passenger sucks and pushes air through a straw to guide their chair. A group of students has designed a device for these wheelchair users that utilizes their arms instead of their hands and they are calling it Roll Control.
Medical students Jessica Mayer and Jerica Johnson recognized the need for this type of device while working on the neurological floor of the University Hospital. They met with a variety of patients with permanent and temporary conditions that rendered them unable to use a joystick-operated wheelchair and noticed that a lot of these patients still had decent arm and shoulder strength.
“A lot of patients feel as though they still have use of their arms, they just don’t have use of that fine motor control,” Mayer said. “So they feel that it’s a far stretch to go from not being able to use the joystick to that sip and puff. They feel it really restricts them and what they’re able to do because the sip and puff really doesn’t move the wheelchair that well,” Mayer said.
The Roll Control won’t just save patients from embarrassment, but it will also save them money. Sip and puff systems typically cost between $1,000 and $2,000 and many insurance companies will not cover the cost. The Roll Control is projected to cost about $30 to $50.
Roll Control attaches to the armrest of the wheelchair and over the joystick. The user’s arm is strapped into the device, which acts as a mediator between the user and the joystick.
Because the baby boomer generation is getting older, the market for the Roll Control is anticipated to grow. The range of users is wide and includes not only people who are aging but also those undergoing rehabilitation from strokes and accidents.
Unlike many other start-ups at the U, Roll Control’s team is not going through the Technology Commercialization Office, which helps students take their inventions into the marketplace.
“There’s a lot of red tape working with the university that if you’re independent you don’t have,” Johnson said. “You have a lot more work that you have to do if you’re doing it independently, but you also get things going hopefully a little bit faster and you have a little bit more say in exactly where the product goes.”
The large workload has not stopped the group from raising funds. So far they have raised more than $700 through a crowd funding website called Rockethub.com, and have won $3,000 from the Bench to Bedside competition where they connected with the two engineers they are currently working with.
Right now their first priority is to get Roll Control into the market and making a difference in people’s lives. Their second priority is obtaining a patent for it, which could cost anywhere between $3,500 and $10,000.