SBIR-STTR Award

The long-term objectives of the VERTRAN Project are to develop a low-cost, attractive, standing wheelchair that serves the need of its users in the following ways:1. Economically, by increasing their mobility and improving employment opportunities; 2. Socially, by allowing the users to be at eye level while conversing; and 3. Physically, by offering wheelchair users the physiological benefits of standing.These goals will be met through identifying an improved manufacturing process; hiring a team of engineers, artists, and writers to complete pre-prototypical design drawings; analyzing the designs through computerized dynamic, static, and stress and strain analyses; evaluating the designs, based on suggestions from a focus group of individuals with disabilities; and applying design improvements to the computer draft before a physical prototype is done.Technological innovation will come from VERTRAN's untraditional standing function. Users will be positioned toward the center of the machine, not in the front, as is done with the few other available standing wheelchairs.

Anticipated Results:
Commercial application will come from VERTRAN's low cost. A retail price of $5,000 will enable doctors and physical therapists to prescribe VERTRAN to patients who rely on government assistance to pay for such assistive devices. The anticipated commercial results of the VERTRAN Project will be the sale of the VERTRAN standing wheelchair to rehabilitation facilities, government hospitals, and individual consumers.

The VERTRAN Project, a collaboration between FENA Design and St. Cloud State University, combines the talents of the University of Kansas, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and consultants like rehabilitation specialists, wheelchair technicians, manufacturing experts, and industrial designers. The gathering of these individuals has resulted in comprehensive improvements over existing standing wheelchairs by increasing user mobility, decreasing unit cost, and meeting market needs.Increased mobility, attributed to the standing function, enables users to reach items previously unattainable, eliminating the necessity of costly renovations in both the home and workplace. VERTRAN provides mobility to individuals of all ages with all ranges of mobility impaimments, whether the impairment be degenerative or injury related, at one-third the cost of some existing standing wheelchairs.The project is concerned with the development of a new type of standing wheelchair that offers the features of enhanced stability, functional positioning, appealing design, reduced shear and pressure, and easy customization to individual needs. The success of this project will be determined by comparing VERTRAN to the competition in regard to these features.

Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications of Research:
:At the completion of Phase II, VERTRAN's commercialization will begin. Industrial designers from the University of Kansas and the University of minois at Chicago will complete VERTRAN's design, incorporating contoured exterior body panels into VERTRAN's final design. The engineering drawings will be combined with the artistic industrial designs and licensed to potential manufacturing partners as we begin producing VERTRAN.Prototypes will be constructed at St. Cloud State University and tested at the Human Engineering Resource Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. After gaining FDA clearance, FENA design will license VERTRAN's technology to FDA-approved medical products manufacturing fimms with existing distribution networks. VERTRAN will be made available to rehabilitation facilities, government hospitals, and individuals consumers in 1998 when it enters the wheelchair market.