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Electric standing aids makes it easier for disabled people to stand up

Many of us sometimes find it difficult to stand up but only a few people understand what it is like to no longer be able to stand up and hold themselves in a vertical position by themselves due to a physical and/or mental disability. The company Rehatec from Baden-Württemberg develops high-quality and practical everyday aids that offer high therapeutic benefits to such children, young people and adults and also promote their active participation in life and social interaction with other people in our society. For example, the “Heidelberg Upright Stander Impuls” helps patients move from a sitting to a standing position and back again in a safe and comfortable manner. A special feature of this standing aid is its electric belt retractor. This is used to unwind and retract the anatomically shaped buttock support belt at the push of a button. It significantly reduces the workload for carers and enables them to move even heavy patients into a standing position effortlessly. Patients also benefit from the added safety and comfort offered by this standing aid – two factors that already played a decisive role when searching for a suitable drive. The product developers at Rehatec ultimately found the right solution from the company Becker-Antriebe, a specialist for drives and control units for roller shutters and sun protection systems based in Hesse.

Maximum safety thanks to the direct current drive

The special feature of the Becker drive – which is usually used to automate roller shutters – is that unlike many comparable drives on the market it operates using direct current, which makes using the standing aid even safer. “We have a huge responsibility for the well-being of our customers when developing our aids. Therefore, one of the crucial issues for us in the development of our electric standing aid was how to deliver maximum performance while also offering a maximum level of safety", explains Melanie Feuerstein, Head of Marketing at Rehatec. “Our Impuls standing aid has to be connected to the electricity grid in order to work properly. Although the risk of an electric shock is exceptionally small, we also wanted to exclude any risk to the patient and their carer even in this unlikely event. Therefore, we wanted to avoid using those drives that are normally operated using alternating current. During our search for a suitable solution, we stumbled across the company Becker who also manufacture drives that operate using direct current. Their drives combine powerful performance with a low electrical current and are thus ideal for our requirements.” It was then necessary to work together closely with Rehatec to discuss the finer details. One thing that is especially important to the experts at Becker when providing product advice is to precisely understand the solutions offered by their customers. Ultimately, this was also how Becker selected the ideal type of drive for Rehatec and then tailored it to their specific requirements. It was important to ensure, for example, that the drive could be seamlessly integrated into the existing system used for the standing aid and also vital that any issues related to the approval of the product were taken into account.

Slowly and quietly unwinds and retracts the belt

The Upright Stander Impuls is normally used to help someone stand up from a wheelchair. People who use wheelchairs usually suffer from hypertonia due to their conditions and have a very high muscle tone or they may suffer from hypotonia, which is associated with a low muscle tone and a rather limp body posture. In both cases, the patient is usually unable or barely able to move from a sitting to a standing position on their own. It is thus even more important for the Heidelberg Upright Stander Impuls to lift people into a standing position as gently as possible. The drive from Becker also made a valuable contribution in this area: It operates particularly slowly and quietly, which means it offers both patients and carers a maximum level of comfort. To help the patient stand up, the buttock support belt is correctly placed in the wheelchair and securely attached around the patient’s pelvis using a hook-and-loop fastener. Snap hooks are then used to connect the buttock support belt to the electric belt retractor, which is operated via a hand-held switch and can be unwound and retracted again. As soon as the patient is standing upright, the belts stops retracting and the standing-up process ends automatically. For this purpose, the standing aid is equipped with a cushioned chest pad that triggers an emergency stop mechanism on the motor as soon as it is touched. This emergency stop buffer also automatically blocks the retracting function on the hand-held switch. This means that once the motor has been stopped, the hand-held switch can now only be used to unwind the belt and lower the patient back into a sitting position safely and comfortably at the end of their standing therapy session.

Safe control in every situation

Alongside the emergency stop buffer, the compact control unit on the electric belt retractor is equipped with some other safety functions that make using the standing aid a worry-free experience. An easily accessible emergency stop button can be pressed at any time to stop the drive if necessary. In the event of a power cut, it is also possible to manually release the belt again using the supplied key. “We are very pleased to have had a strong partner like Becker at our side since 2021”, emphasises Melanie Feuerstein from Rehatec. “We are pleased with every aspect from the high quality of the drive through to the first-class service, while our customers are also impressed with the new model of our standing aid. This is especially important to us because it is our customers that need to be able to rely 100% on the technology we use in our products in real life.” In this case Becker also remained true in the best possible sense to its brand promise of making things easier for everyone.

You can find detailed information on the Heidelberg Upright Stander Impuls at: www.rehatec.com 

You can see the electric standing aid in action in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/U6xsn_-Zq4w