Clinics, labs, hospitals, classrooms, conference rooms … seating and wheeled mobility is an awesome industry, but an intense and tiring one. You deserve a breather!
Enter the Mobility Management Coffee Break, social and digital media quick hits recommended by your colleagues (and me)!
Send me your recommendations ([email protected]), along with a sentence or two about why you’ve chosen them. Yes, you can recommend your own websites, podcasts and resources!
HERL’s $5 fundraising goal
I just said this column is all about taking a break. But on Tuesday, Feb. 24, you might want to make yours a coffee-less break so you can donate the cost of your morning or afternoon brew to the University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL).
For the 2026 Pitt Day of Giving, HERL is hoping that 350 participants will donate $5 each, with the goal of finishing atop the donation leader board — an achievement that would earn HERL matching university funds.
And for today’s take-five moment: Check out this Powered Personal Transfer System — lead researcher is Shantanu A. Satpute, Ph.D. — that can move a power wheelchair user into a hospital bed and back again. Think: conveyor belt.
SOUL searching: A new way to think of mobility
In Complex Rehab Technology (CRT), there is manual mobility: self-propelled ultralightweight wheelchairs. There is power mobility. And they roll along on parallel tracks … until a longtime ultralightweight wheelchair rider transitions to power, due to repetitive strain injuries, progressive conditions, and the natural aging process.
That transition forces a huge lifestyle adjustment — wheelchair-accessible vehicles, for example — often accompanied by existential adjustments on the part of the rider.
SOUL Mobility is addressing that gap between manual and power on its own terms.
This video nomination came from Jill Patty, a CRT industry veteran and SOUL Mobility’s sales manager. “I would love to nominate SOUL Mobility’s YouTube video featuring our founder, Todd Hargroder,” Jill said in her submission. “In the video, Todd shares his personal story as a wheelchair user and what motivates him to continue inventing innovative products for the CRT industry.”
Hargroder, the founder of Accessible Designs Inc., is an industry legend for pushing back against the status quo. SOUL Mobility’s Power-Flex system challenges a couple of presumptions: that there are only two modes of mobility, and that power assist is all about expanding the distances that can be traveled.
The Power-Flex offers 30 degrees of manual tilt and features a mono shock suspension to reduce the vibration that reaches the rider, all while remaining quick and easy to attach and remove. Worthwhile SOUL searching, indeed.
