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01/25/2017 07:30 AMWith an unshakeable belief that her design will make life better for people living with wheelchairs, Branford artist and innovator Susan Farricielli has been patiently working to bring her patented Kinetic Innovative Seating System (KiSS) to the masses. And after 25 years of work, she’s heading into the home stretch.
Susan actually began working on her design in 1991. The accomplished sculptor and Branford native (Branford High School Class of ‘75) was inspired to design her first prototype to help her grandmother. Susan recognized that adding some seating flexibility would greatly assist her grandmother in finding some relief from the stiffness and poor circulation she was experiencing with her wheelchair use. With a master’s in industrial design (Rhode Island School of Design) and undergraduate degree in sculpture (Northern Kentucky University), Susan applied her talents to earn a 1995 National Endowment for the Arts grant (Design Arts) for a wheelchair seat design for the elderly. Susan patented the design in 1999.
In the ensuing years, Susan entered the long learning curve leading to her goal of bringing the seat and seatback design to market. She even "put it away" for a while to teach. She taught the "History of Modern Design" and "Design Innovation" at Quinnipiac University from 1996 to 2010 and "Materials for Architects" at Yale University School of Architecture from 2000 to 2012.
“In 2010, I had just started to resuscitate the project. In the past five years, I started working on it again,” says Susan. “It was much more work than I anticipated! It has to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and receive coding through Medicare. It’s a long haul, but it’s come along very nicely, and I’ve received some great support over the years.”
Susan is very grateful to have gained the backing of an investor, Janet Carrus, a philanthropist, entrepreneur and film producer. A video of Susan showing how the seat works can be viewed here. In it, the inventor describes the simplicity of the idea, allowing them better ease of reach, stretching/leaning back and even using the seat’s slight spring action to help with better propulsion.
The KiSS seat base provides solid support that’s lightweight (less than 3 pounds). It can be inserted into any standard wheelchair and accepts any wheelchair cushion over it. Standard cushions also fit over the seat back insertion. The KiSS seat back also has spring action to allow flexing and can have lateral or top supports added to give the user a bit more adjustability.
“It’s comfortable because it moves,” says Susan, adding the idea is to, “...let your body always have movement. Never keep your body stagnant.”
The seats can go into just about any wheelchair frame in place of standard cloth seats. In fact, Susan has used so many standard wheelchairs to help test her product through the years, she recently was able to contribute six very gently-used wheelchairs to Yale-New Haven Hospital (formerly St. Raphael’s) for patients to use. Susan offered to donate the chairs after picking up her mom from surgery a few weeks back and finding a dearth of wheelchairs available for visiting patients.
While those wheelchairs can’t be donated with KiSS seating, Susan is closing in on the day when any wheelchair can be easily converted. Last week, Susan received her first delivery of manufactured KiSS seats that will help her take the final steps in the process. Working with a research team, she’s on the cusp of compiling final data, should she receive a grant to fund upcoming testing which could ultimately allow KiSS to succeed. Susan is waiting on news of whether KiSS will receive a Small Business Technology Transfer Grant applied for through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“We recently submitted a proposal to do a seating study on the wheelchair seat (with) Dr. Barbara Crane of the University of Hartford—she’s the wheelchair seating guru—and Dr. Michael Wininger at the VA Hospital,” says Susan.
Susan has already done some work wih Dr. Crane, a Professor of Physical Therapy. Dr. Crane is well-known in her profession for her primary research related to outcomes of wheelchair and seating technologies applied to those with disabilities.
“One of the big negative ideas about a wheelchair seat that moves is it’s going to impact propulsion,” says Susan. “Barbara said let’s measure it; maybe the trade-off is worth it. So we measured it, and what we found is propulsion is actually improved!”
Dr. Wininger would provide the proposed study with his attention to areas such as stream analysis, applied algorithmics, clinical trial design and operation. Dr. Wininger is the Statistician of Medicine at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies program. He’s also Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics and Assistant Professor, University of Hartford.
If the grant for the proposed seating study comes through, Susan said about 20 volunteers will need to be gathered to complete the testing.
“First there will be a laboratory test, and then a long-term study where they sit in the seat in their own environment for four weeks and then there’s evaluation,” says Susan. “We can get clinical data to prove certain things; with lab study tests for propulsion, posture, functional reach etc. Because the seating system is so unusual, people have said from the very start it’s not a good idea to put somebody in a seat the moves in a wheelchair. But they’re more comfortable, they can move better. So what we need to do is to measure that and to show its actually true.”