Sunday, September 16, 2012

Panasonic Developing Wheelchair/Bed Hybrid


Panasonic is developing an electric bed that has the unique ability to transform itself into a wheelchair.  It is intended for limited mobility patients that have difficulty with transferring from their hospital bed to their wheelchair and resolves this issue by simply having them morph into each other.  The patient only needs to be moved onto the side of the bed that transforms into a wheelchair and the transition is performed via a remote that can be utilized by a single operator.  More information after the jump.


Panasonic says, "This is an electric care bed with assist capability. This product combines a bed and a wheelchair. Ordinarily, moving from a bed to a wheelchair is very difficult. But this product makes it easy for a single assistant to do it. That's the biggest feature of this electric care bed."

This bed was built to reduce the number of assistants needed to help a patient transfer onto their wheelchair.  What would normally require two to three assistants to perform this task is now reduced to one.  This allows the other assistants to be utilized for other patients.

Panasonic is currently "testing this product in nursing homes, where it's actually being used to care for seniors. Next, we'd like people to use it for care at home. We hope it'll help users of care beds to be active out of bed as much as possible."

Check out the clip below.

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