subject: Wheelchair Manufacturers That Produce The Best Products [print this page] It's not like there's only one wheelchair company in the world these days. Wheelchair manufacturing has, in fact, become a growth industry. Fortunately, this is not due to a proportionate increase in people in wheelchairs.
It is in fact somewhat for the other reason. Advances in medical science, physical therapy, and other fields are making it increasingly possible for people who might never have walked again to recover.
The same applies to injuries further up the spinal cord, or impairments that are not due to spinal cord injury at all but are perhaps due to disease or congenital issues. While their mobility may still be limited, it is to a far lesser degree.
This, added to a concomitant awareness that physical limitations need not place similar constraints on a person's brain, nor on their ability to function and excel in the day to day world, has led to numerous innovations and advances in all manner of personal chairs built and designed by wheelchair manufacturers or their occupants. Who may well be the same person.
As a result, wheelchair manufacturers no longer churn out one kind of chair, where the only difference was in structural quality. There really is almost no such thing as a standard wheelchair any longer. Mobility impaired people can race, climb stairs, and any number of other things that persons with the full use of all their limbs find daunting.
And finally, wheelchair manufacturers have expanded into the area of making chairs that serve the transient occupant and an attendant. Many of the newer chairs serve those who spend the better part of their lives using them. There are very few companies in the former category, which is not really a problem since one company has created a product that meets all needs.
One of the biggest problems institutional purchasers of transport chairs face is that of theft. The very thing that makes wheelchairs effective in getting people around makes them prone to wander out of hospitals, clinics, and airports under their own power. Theft prevention technology has therefore become a priority for some wheelchair manufacturers.
The most innovative system developed has been that of a transport vehicle that is not identical to the extant models. Because of this change in style and shape, these chairs can be nested, like shopping carts, although with substantially greater security. The rack can be supplied with a locking mechanism that can open with either coins or a staff key, depending on the need.
Furthermore, they can only be operated by an attendant, not by the occupant. This is excellent not just for theft prevention but for institutional use. Enthusiastic patients often flout regulations put in place for the safety of themselves and all other occupants of a given building. In a vehicle that cannot be independently propelled, this risk is a non-starter.
Such a chair does make it harder to write farce scenes involving a runaway patient tearing around a hospital in a stolen wheelchair, but that is a small price to pay.
