Mobility and Safety Solutions

Overview

Wheelchair falls account for over half of the injuries that occur within Craig Hospital and can delay patient recovery by months or even years. Craig Hospital tasked our team with developing a drop-in restraining belt replacement to reduce falls from wheelchairs.

Our solution is the Mobility and Safety Solutions Smart Safety Belt, a drop-in restraining belt replacement compatible with a wide range of wheelchairs. This restraining belt incorporates several sensors capable for detecting the state of the patient and the restraining belt. It can then alert either the patient or their caregiver about potentially hazardous situations, including sensing if the seatbelt is undone while the wheelchair is in use or if the patient has slipped from beneath the seatbelt. Warning systems include an audio alarm as well as the capability to send an alert to an internet connected device.

As an additional feature, the Mobility and Safety Solutions Smart Safety Belt can be electronically locked and unlocked be the caretaker for use with easily agitated patients, which accounts for a subset of the Craig Hospital’s patient base. Engineering modeling, functional testing, and clinician use testing helped advance this iterative design to meet the safety criteria of Craig Hospital engineers and clinicians.