The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites interested parties to team with the NIST Healthcare Mobility Project to further develop a novel healthcare mobility device for the disabled. The device, called the HLPR Chair (for Home Lift, Position, and Rehab Chair), provides advanced capabilities to disabled persons toward independence from caregivers in the home or medical facility. The HLPR Chair technology was recently developed at NIST towards design standards and performance metrics of future wheelchair systems. In its current state, the HLPR Chair is a working testbed allowing NIST researchers to study patient lift, positioning and rehabilitation equipment designs and controls. View the HLPR Chair. NIST would like to collaborate with an industrial partner to jointly develop and test the HLPR Chair, proceed with clinical trials on the HLPR Chair, and further the HLPR Chair technology towards industry commercialization. Currently in the public domain, the HLPR Chair is available to all parties who wish to pursue commercialization. The collaboration will seek access to medical personnel, studying patients fit to use the HLPR Chair, to provide real world data to the collaborator and NIST researchers to progress the HLPR Chair design towards a device deemed useful by the medical community. NIST and standards organizations will then attempt to set standards and do performance measurements on the advanced HLPR Chair. NIST will also continue development beyond the collaboration to provide computer control for the HLPR Chair including advanced 3D sensor guidance and control allowing the disabled and the elderly to prolong independent living.
More info: Roger Bostelman, Intelligent Systems Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 100 Bureau Drive MS 8230, Gaithersburg, MD 20899. Telephone (301) 975-3426; email: roger.bostelman@nist.gov.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Any program undertaken will be within the scope and confines of The Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 (Pub. L. 99-502, 15 U.S.C. 3710a), which provides federal laboratories including NIST, with the authority to enter into cooperative research
agreements with qualified parties. Under this law, NIST may contribute personnel, equipment, and facilities but no funds to the cooperative research program. This is not a grant program.
