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Standing time is a routine part of therapy for many children who use a wheelchair. It supports healthy bones and joints and improves circulation and digestion. But for most kids who use a manual wheelchair, standing often requires a caregiver’s help, a transfer to separate stationary equipment, and time spent in one place, often separate from what’s happening around them.
Gillette Children’s is part of a clinical trial aimed at changing that. The study tests the Ascendus™ Manual Mobile Standing Wheelchair from Optimal Mobility, which combines manual mobility with powered standing in a single device. With the Ascendus™, a child can independently shift between sitting and standing in the same device, without switching equipment, and keep moving while upright. If it works as intended, standing could become part of a child’s everyday life, no longer an occasional activity.
The study includes children and teens ages 8 to 18 who use a manual wheelchair. Rather than testing the chair in a lab alone, researchers are looking at how it performs in simulated home, school, and community environments. They are tracking wheelchair skills, mobility, and biomechanical data along the way.
This real-world approach is a deliberate choice. Optimal Mobility says traditional equipment evaluations rightly focus on safety, positioning, and clinical outcomes, but the company wanted to go further. It is applying human factors engineering to understand how children, caregivers, and clinicians interact with the device, including how easy it is to use and how well it fits into daily routines.
“Our goal is to move beyond asking whether a device can help a child stand or move, to understanding whether it helps that child participate more fully in everyday life,” says Optimal Mobility.
The Gillette team will help answer that question. “As a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and clinical scientists, we understand where the gaps in care exist, what solutions could have the greatest impact for our patient populations, and the real-world challenges and opportunities related to device access and provisioning,” said Alyssa Burckel, Ph.D. and Co-Director of Rehabilitation Research, who leads the study at Gillette Children’s. Optimal Mobility brings the engineering, design, and product development skills to turn an idea into a finished product. Gillette brings the clinical expertise and research experience to make sure that product meets a real need.
Patients and families are part of the work, too. Through Gillette’s Family Engagement in Research Program, they have an equal voice alongside clinical experts and industry partners. Dr. Burckel says that it’s this collaboration that helps ensure any device we build is well-grounded in real patient need and has the best chance of integrating seamlessly into our patients’ lives.
Partnerships like this one are possible because of donor support, which helps sustain the clinical expertise and research infrastructure behind studies like this one. The work currently under way could help shape how children with mobility challenges stand, move, and take part in daily life.
