INOAC & Amakusa Rehabilitation Hospital
Swimo Wheelchair cushion Interview
Rehabilitation is a specialty at Amakusa Rehabilitation Hospital, which has a long history and many results in this field, in Koshigaya City in Saitama Prefecture. Mr. Kazuya Sugimoto, who works as an occupational therapist, made wheel chair cushions by hand for patients. He was looking for a manufacturer who could make the cushion into a product. The manufacturer who stepped forward was INOAC LIVING CO., LTD. That was the moment when two years of collaboration between Mr.Sugimoto and Mr. Takai from INOAC LIVING started.
The self-standing support wheelchair cushion invented by a rehabilitation expert makes it easy for users to stand and carers to care for those in wheelchairs.
INOAC LIVING CO., LTD. Mikio Takai
| 1987 | Entered INOAC CORPORATION Sports section Engaged in importing and selling ski products from Italy. |
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| 1996 | Baby ware business office Launched a new brand: Motemotekun |
| 1999 | INOAC LIVING CO., LTD. Launched the consumer business office |
| 2015 | INOAC LIVING CO., LTD. Integrated the medical and nursing care businesses |
| 2016 | Engaged in developing the Swimo wheelchair cushion |
Amakusa Rehabilitation Hospital Occupational therapist Kazuya Sugimoto
| 1984 | Devised a self-supporting nail cutter using the healthy side of hemiplegic patients when he worked at the Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital |
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| 1985 | Started working for the Amakusa Rehabilitation Hospital Has worked as an occupational therapist for rehabilitation for stroke patients for more than 35 years. |
| 2016 | Developed the Swimo wheelchair cushion together with INOAC LIVING CO., LTD., whom he found on the web |
Want to help patients who can’t sit on wheelchairs
Mr. SugimotoI’ve been working as an occupational therapist in the world of rehabilitation for stroke patients for a long time. The opportunity to develop the wheelchair cushion was when a physical therapist from Harada Hospital (Iruma City, Saitama Prefecture) consulted me concerning a patient who they wanted to be able to eat while he was in a wheelchair. You need to lean forward to eat. However, this stroke patient fell to the left when trying to lean forward due to paralysis on the left side of his body. They asked me if there was any way to solve this with a cushion. I ordered a commercially available polyethylene foam and made a sample by cutting it and scraping using a grinder and gluing pieces of foam together. The first point to be noted is the smooth and high protrusion I made at the position close to the hip bone under a sitting posture. This protrusion becomes support for the thighs so that the user can eat while keeping a sitting posture. Please sit on a chair and put both your hands under your thighs. You’ll see that leaning forward is easy and your posture is stable. That hand-made sample embodied this experience.
Mr. TakaiI thought this was great when I first saw it.
Mr. SugimotoI planned to make a cushion that can stabilize the posture of the user such as when standing from a wheelchair and moving to a toilet or when wearing or taking off a jacket while sitting in a wheelchair. I made two cushions close to this product and one of them was for my conference presentation. I asked a seating team of a rehabilitation hospital with whom I have a long-standing relationship to verify if it is immediately effective when a user sits. Fifteen patients at the hospital cooperated with this and we confirmed it was more effective than improving the trunk function, enabling me to present this at the conference.
Mr. TakaiThe major features of the cushion made by Mr. Sugimoto are correcting posture only by sitting on it, stabilizing the posture and the ease of standing up.
Mr. SugimotoMost wheelchair cushions available on the market seem to pursue superior body pressure dispersion to keep sitting for a long time. However, engaged in rehabilitation, I wanted a cushion that supports recovering motion and activities in daily life. Then, I kept on making custom-made cushions fitting each patient and reached the current shape that combines the conical shape giving a feeling of wrapping the pelvis and the protruded shape supporting the thighs. User ease to stand up is very important for carers since assisting transferring to a toilet is very hard. When a small wife takes care of a big husband, the probability she will hurt her back is high. Now they say with joy that the hips of their husbands have become light (laughs).
Why the hips of their husbands became lighter
Mr. TakaiWhy did the hips of their husbands become lighter? It is a wonder why it becomes easy to stand up, isn’t it?
Mr. SugimotoGenerally, a wheelchair seat is made of fabric and the seat warps with the sitter’s own body weight when sitting on it. Though it remains even when the user sits in the center, the left side of the seat will becomes higher if the user sits only on the left side and the right side becomes higher if the user sits only on the right side. Post-stroke hemiplegic patients have a little difficulty sitting in the center. A patient suffering from paralysis of his left hand and leg tends to rely on his right hand and leg. This is why the patient comes to sit on the right side of a seat. This cushion has a conical shape pit to receive the hip. Because of this, your hip bone will naturally settle at the center even when sitting on the right or left side of the seat. This is the second point.
Mr. TakaiSo, you can sit in the center without being conscious of the sitting position.
Mr. SugimotoFirst, you sit in the center and stabilize your posture. This leads to the first point, as I mentioned before, ease of standing up thanks to the hill (protrusion) close to the hip bone as the supporting point of the thigh bones. As I mentioned before, body weight will place little burden on the hip bone with the posture made by putting both hands under the thighs while sitting in a chair. That’s why you don’t feel pain in your hip. Moreover, the burden on the legs is decreased when the center of gravity of your body goes forward. Your palm is not very thick but when increasing the height to around 3 cm, your thighs will just be placed on the hill (protrusion) and your body naturally leans forward so that you can easily stand up. It will be unnecessary for a small wife who is a carer to raise her husband’s waist and pull his hip up, reducing the burden on her back.
Mr. TakaiStanding up is easy since the center of gravity of your body moves from hip to thighs with a swinging movement just like a seesaw. The Swimo name originated from this.
Mr. SugimotoI have a patient who has gonarthrosis in both knees and can’t stand up due to pain in his legs, even when he tries to stand up by himself. I asked him to try Swimo. When I asked him if he could stand, he stood up without feeling any pain. I was surprised, but he was even more amazed. The patients who tried Swimo taught me many things about its effects. I can’t wait to deliver Swimo to therapists and patients who are waiting for its release.
The meeting started on the Web
Mr. SugimotoI was totally worn out making cushions since it takes a week to make a single cushion (laughs). So, I planned to bring this to a company for commercialization and talked to a wheelchair manufacturer first. They said that cushions were out of their field. So I searched the Internet and found INOAC LIVING CO., LTD.
Mr. TakaiWe never imagined that we could have an opportunity leading to socially-significant work via the Internet. When we received your inquiry, another salesman visited you first and I did the next visit. Thus I came to respect and admire you, Mr. Sugimoto. The chief director of the Amakusa Rehabilitation Hospital is also a man of understanding and from planning to development was very smooth.
Mr. SugimotoI found that there are many required processes to go through when talking about productization even though we have an idea.
Mr. TakaiIt took around two years to come this far. We made a mold upon productization and it was a one-shot contest. We asked Mr. Sugimoto to check the 3D design drawing many times and finally received approval. During these processes, I broke out in a cold sweat, thinking about what I would do if I failed when making a mold. When the mold was completed, it was then time for trial and error for how and where to adjust the urethane hardness. The INOAC group also manufactures seats for vehicles and utilizing that know-how was incredibly useful.
Mr. SugimotoWe could make a better one than the sample thanks to your work.
We hope that our product will satisfy as many people as possible.
Mr. TakaiCurrently, Swimo is now one-size only. We designed it to fit most people but it may not fit people who have large or small builds. Therefore, we suggest putting an adjuster cushion under Swimo to make it fit. For people who have a large build, using the adjuster cushion suppresses the seat sinking and prevents feeling cramped. For people who have a small build, using the adjuster cushion makes the seat sink deeper to enclose the body with the cushion.
Mr. SugimotoThis sample is also very popular and a scramble has already started at Harada Hospital for this.
Mr. TakaiWe finally established a mass-production system. We could realize your desired coating type and now we have a line-up of two types: the covering type and coating type. We are currently visiting many hospitals and we heard many people say that they definitely want to use it.
Mr. SugimotoIt will be a pleasure if this cushion can provide satisfaction and we can help as many patients be as independent as possible.
A meeting on the web gave birth to this epic product. It is our pleasure to manufacture a product based on the ideas of Mr. Sugimoto, who has been engaged in nursing care for a long time, and it will be our utmost pleasure if our product supports the independence of many patients.
Product information
Swimo® Coating type
Cushion for wheelchair with coating that makes maintenance easy.
¥48,400(tax included)
