Wheeling into the future

A small black wheelchair sits in an office at the corner of Cahaba Road and Shades Creek Parkway. It belonged to Lloyd Cooper’s father and was the inspiration for the new kind of chair on wheels that surround it in the work space. 

Cooper, an industrial designer by trade, had taken note when his father, Belton’s, health was declining at age 87. 

A World War II veteran and Naval architect who designed ships, Belton had long stressed to his son the importance of understanding problems in order to design the best solutions for them. Years later, he had broken both hips and was confined to that black chair.

 “I had watched my dad sit in his wheelchair for three or four hours a day to watch TV because it was hard for him to stand up or move onto other furniture,” said Cooper, a Crestline resident. “And I had seen the stress it put on a caretaker like my mom.”

And so, charged by Dr. Will Ferniany, CEO of the UAB Health System, Cooper set out to create a solution with his company, PUSH Product Design.

What evolved from research with various health care professionals was a new kind of chair, one that enables the patient to easily get in and out of the seat and have a much more comfortable experience while sitting. In addition, it reduces the strain of a nurse or caretaker who assists the patient in getting in and out of the chair. 

The Movi features a built-in lift that positions the patient with his or her body weight over the legs, requiring 20-30 percent less effort to get out of the chair than a traditional wheelchair. Also unique are footrests that rest flesh to the ground instead of rests that require being moved in and out upon sitting in the chair. The chair can recline at any time to a position that is most comfortable to whoever is sitting in it.

Cooper finds the chair so comfortable that he will often sit in it to work on his laptop for hours at a time in the Movi office.

A year ago, the first set of Movi chairs were delivered to UAB. UAB currently has 10 chairs and has ordered 100 more. The VA Medical Center recently ordered 20, and orders are pending with several other hospitals. 

The chairs have made their way into homes as well. John Higgins, a Mountain Brook resident and friend of Cooper’s since kindergarten at Highlands Day School, immediately thought of what Cooper had told him about Movi when his father, David, was undergoing radiation for cancer and in need of a wheelchair. In May, Higgins picked up the phone, and a few days later, his father was in possession of a Movi. 

 “It made such a huge difference in what my father experienced at home,” Higgins said. “He was able to get around the house and get up out of the chair to go to the restroom and go to bed. He wanted to stay in the chair because he was comfortable and even reclined and spent the whole night in it. It truly was a game changer for my father and made his quality of life so much better for the last month of his life.”

Higgins noted that he even brought the Movi to his dad’s appointments at Brookwood Medical Center because it was so much easier for his father to use than the hospital’s wheelchair.

Now Movi, a spin-off company from PUSH, is working on a second-generation model designed more specifically for home use.

Building on his past experience designing office furniture and automobile seating, Cooper wants the chair to look more like a classic piece of modernist furniture than institutional black and chrome and have the comfort you find in a nice seat in a car. Plus, it will come in customizable fabrics to match a customer’s taste and/or their living room décor.

Above aesthetics, he wants it to be a comfortable place for persons with conditions like Parkinson’s, cancer or polio to sit for hours at a time. It will feature a headrest, larger padded arms, padded leg lift, magazine rack and a side table.

The current hospital model has a price tag of $3,995, and the new version will likely cost more with bells and whistles.

The new generation, named “Stingray” while in development, will make its debut at the Health Care Design Conference in Orlando in November. 

Cooper’s dad didn’t live to see its debut or to try out the first model, but he did get to see his son design countless products based on the problems he saw. And he got to ride the high cycle at the McWane Center that his son designed.