
Bart Van der Heyden had seen it all — and he’d seen enough. Despite so many innovations in wheelchair design, conventional wheelchair seating was still leaving users struggling, leaving them vulnerable to postural challenges and complications and loss of function.
“Sliding is a challenge, repositioning is a challenge, getting set up correctly in a wheelchair is a challenge,” says Van der Heyden, PT, founder and owner of SuperSeating, which provides seating, wheelchair mobility and wound management services. “And then if you set them up correctly, it’s just from one snapshot in time. I thought it was in a way incredible that we still have these challenges.”
To solve it, Van der Heyden got right to work and invented what would become the Effortless Postural Control seating system, or EPiC, manufactured and distributed by Burnet, Texas-based Stealth Products. EPiC is a seating system that is added to a variety of compatible manual tilt mobility bases to provide segmented postural management and postural variation for the user.
In short, EPiC enables wheelchair users to have more control over their mobility and posture. It is one of Van der Heyden most important contributions to the wheelchair industry, and is a vital example of the benefits of collaboration between government, industry, academia and community.
How a clinician-turned-inventor brought the next wave of wheelchair technology
For 28 years, Van der Heyden has specialized in multiple intersecting fields around wheelchair user care, working in rehab in Belgium, Germany and the United States and delivering clinical consultations with wheelchair users, clinicians and manufacturers. He and his wife co-founded a physical therapy practice in Belgium, where his work in the field continued.
The combination of direct care delivery, consultation and lecturing gave Van Der Heyden a unique, 360-degree perspective of wheelchair challenges, ones he thought would have long ago been solved.
“Instead, we still had the same old technologies since the 1980s and earlier: basically tilt in space, back support recline and all kinds of solutions to support the spine. But wheelchair seating remains challenging,” he said. “I thought, ‘Why is that?’ And can we improve outcomes?”
Van der Heyden did a study on why providing spinal and lumber support had limitations for people with severe postal challenges. What he saw was that the force on the lumbar spine from the postural supports was often generating a shear force, pushing wheelchair users forward rather than facilitating extending their spine.
“That got me going,” he says, leading to a question of whether pushing directly on the PSIS to lumbar support and extend was the best way to help users. He began working on the biomechanical concepts, examining the biomechanics of the spine; his final product included a number of key innovations, including:
- An adjustable, fixed pelvic support that helps maintain the pelvic to thigh angle
- A static (with handles released) posterior thoracic support feature that supports the user at a selectable angle
- An articulating (with handles locked) posterior thoracic support feature that moves in sync with the user and absorbs force applied to it, returning to an upright position when that force is removed
Support is provided in two anatomical segments: a fixed support at the pelvis and an articulating thoracic segment. Anatomically-appropriate adjustable pivot points and articulation paths create a system that significantly reduces shear force and where lateral and head supports will not change position when adjusting, providing postural variation.
“I said, ‘That’s brilliant,’ because it would solve a lot of my problems,” he says.
Pathways to progress from a prototype stage into a commercial product
In developing EPiC, Van der Heyden brought many minds to the table, an approach that exemplifies the value of the quadruple helix model: that is, the fusing of contributions from academia, community, government and industry. The model helps foster innovation that is both clinically and technically sound, as well as user-centered.
Van der Heyden leaned on help from an array of people to first build a prototype and then finalize the product. He collaborated with his wife and spoke with his brother-in-law, a civil engineer. He leaned on wheelchair researcher Dr. Alexander Siefert, whose biomechanical study on the lumbar spine helped inspire Van der Heyden’s perspective.
“I wanted my prototype to be simple to adjust, because we see that a lot of clinicians don’t have a lot of time to make adjustments around, and it’s very fatiguing for wheelchair users to go to rehab engineers backwards and forwards to get the system adjusted,” Van der Heyden says. “I said, if caregivers and therapists can adjust it really simply without any consequence for wheelchair users, because it moves in sync with your spine, then they can figure out the best movement for that particular time for the client, adjust it with a flip of a handle instead of spanner or with tools.”
He fine-tuned the prototype and then validated it. “If I give the same system the opportunity to self-adjust according to fatigue, tone or comfort, then the user himself or herself can change their posture depending on the task and the comfort level that they are looking for,” he says. “That’s basically what’s EPiC was all about.”
What’s next for EPiC in 2025
When Van der Heyden was ready to bring it to market he met with several manufacturers. He found a fit with Stealth Products.
“I had the best feeling with Stealth,” he says. “They had the license to produce it in the medical arena.”
The system has been on the market for about a year now, with exciting results and outcomes aplenty. On March 20 and 21, Van der Heyden will present many of those insights at the International Seating Symposium in Pittsburgh. The first of his three presentations, titled “Clinician AND inventor? The journey of seating challenges leading towards innovation,” will tell the EPiC story, including insights from a 15-year ergonomic study that led to his original prototype.
His other two presentations — titled “Are We Satisfied With Current Seating Technology Outcomes Or Should We Strive To Achieve More?” and “Is your back support keeping you cool? Microclimate investigation of solid back supports” — will continue to share with industry leaders the lessons he has gleaned from this work, including his winning partnership with Stealth.
“I applaud them for embracing innovation, because it’s not easy in our field,” he says about Stealth. “We have funding hurdles, we have conservative thoughts. But they embrace innovation and wanted to commit themselves to new outcomes and banner outcomes. They were not satisfied with the way things were going and they made it a whole team effort because they are committed to what’s best for users. That’s a risk for them, a big commitment for them, and I’m very proud of them for doing so.”
This Views article is sponsored by Stealth Products LLC and EPiC. To learn more about this revolutionary seating system, visit Epic Seating at epic-seating.stealthproducts.com.