A product to help disabled get in and out of car
A product to
help disabled get in and out of car
New
Delhi.There are about 2.68 crore people with disabilities in India.
About 20% of them have difficulty in movement which causes problems in
commuting. A significant challenge of mobility has to do with getting in &
out of cars. There is a dearth of products that are completely engineered to
provide assistance. Available solutions are mainly modifications made by local
garages. Some imported solutions are available. But they are very expensive and
only a few dealers handle them. In case of any problem with the product,
servicing is a major issue.
Biotechnology Industry Research
Assistance Council (BIRAC), a not-for-profit public sector enterprise, set up
by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India is supporting the scaling up of an assistive
technology innovation that offers an alternative.
`Named
‘TurnPlus’, the innovation developed by a Bengaluru-based startup- Truce
Consulting Services Pvt Ltd, provides for easy entry and exit into the front
seat of a passenger car. It is a simple to install, swivel seat mechanism which is fitted under the
existing bucket seat of a car. This allows the seat to pivot and come out to
ensure that people who find it difficult to get in and out of a car do so with
minimum effort.
The product is especially useful for
wheel-chair transfers and the elderly. It also addresses a very important
aspect of easy seating for people with medical conditions such as arthritis, knee & back problems,
multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, leg amputation, calipers, corrected
polio, parkinsons, osteoarthritis and paralytic cases.
It
takes only three to four hours to install it and the same can be done at the
customer's place itself. Additionally, it does not involve any modification in
the vehicle and thus can be dismantled and reinstalled in another vehicle if
required. Further, no maintenance is required & the product comes with a
3-year warranty.
DBT-BIRAC is supporting the innovation
under its 'BIRAC-Social Alpha Quest for Assistive Technologies–supported by
Mphasis' programme launched in June 2019 in collaboration with Social Alpha,
which is a not-for-profit platform created by Foundation for Innovation and
Social Entrepreneurship (FISE), sponsored and supported by the Tata Trusts to
promote socially relevant innovations and entrepreneurship with a mission to
create large scale sustainable social impact.
The programme aims to foster an ecosystem to develop, support and scale assistive technologies solutions from start-ups. The winners of the program were supported in the form of grant prizes up to INR 50 lakh each and an opportunity to get enrolled in a three months accelerator program
(India Science Wire)