The IBOT is Dead!

[JohnBoucher]

Last stair-climbing wheelchair raises high-tech questions

This is unbelievable. What a closed minded system we have that would allow this to cease production.

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[EricVanWyk]

It is a hard lesson for an engineer to learn that "social engineering" can be just as or more important than the engineering we are trained for.

[Chris is me]

Yet another thing wrong with the healthcare system if you ask me. A fantastic, life changing product and then Medicare decides it's not worth it for the disabled?

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Yet another thing wrong with the healthcare system if you ask me. A fantastic, life changing product and then Medicare decides it's not worth it for the disabled?

Medicare didn't say it wasn't worth it, they said that the people who need wheelchairs don't need THIS wheelchair. They can live a normal life with a wheelchair that doesn't go up and down stairs or raise them to standing height. You don't have to have stairs in your house and if you don't have stairs why do you need a wheelchair that goes up and down stairs? Buildings are supposed to be wheelchair accessible nowadays, so why do they need chairs that go up stairs if you can get around with out stairs?

Now im not saying that Medicare is right, but i can see the reason they don't want to fork out $22,000 dollars for a device that isn't really needed.

I have to say that if i ever have the need for a wheel chair i would totally
want one of these because i find that the "raising you to eye level" with "normal" people is the best aspect of the chair not the going up stairs.

If the makers of the Ibot found a way to make them more economically friendly these chairs would be the norm, but until they do people are going to have to continue to use the devices that they can afford and that their insurance companies will help pay for.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

It is a hard lesson for an engineer to learn that "social engineering" can be just as or more important than the engineering we are trained for.

On the contrary it could drive home the point that Engineers need to strive for innovation in the manufacturing process in order to reduce costs, even after a product's design is considered to be complete.

[Wetzel]

Living in central London, I can't even imagine life in a wheelchair. THREE of the about 50 tube stations in zones 1 and 2 are wheelchair accessible. Things were not built to be wheelchair friendly, with many buildings a few hundred years old. Retrofits are often roundabout and tricky to find, though I imagine things are a lot better than 10 years ago when the IBOT was first released. I was just on crutches for a while, and stairs where tricky and I avoided them when I could. They surprisingly hard to avoid, and going around was often a LONG way around.

Spend a day not using any step over 6 inches, not even in a wheelchair, and you will get a bit of an idea how different life would be.

Wetzel

[Akash Rastogi]

That's a little pathetic in my eyes. Everyone knows that life is full of compromises...but really? Seriously? Compromising the well-being of one another? That is truly pathetic.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

That's a little pathetic in my eyes. Everyone knows that life is full of compromises...but really? Seriously? Compromising the well-being of one another? That is truly pathetic.

It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

They cost a lot of money, money isn't made on trees.

It'd be nice to feed every starving person and help everyone who needs it, but you can't do that by just deciding to do it. If you want help to occur, you have to take action to make sure it is resourced and funded.

It's not a perfect world, but it's the world we live in, so learn how to work it.

[ATannahill]

I once sprained my ankle and had to use elevators for weeks. Although it was not close to being comparable to a being in a wheelchair, I discovered that, without stairs, life is hard. I discovered that the only times I went to my locker, I used stairs to get there and then I used them again to go back to where I started. I also realized how hard it was to attend a regional without using stairs.

[JaneYoung]

In the area of Austin where I live and drive through during the week, to and from work, it doesn't take long to see the crying need for better and improved motorized scooters and wheelchairs for the people who use them to get where they are going. The wheelchairs are the worst by far. People use them because it is what they have, what they can afford, what they know to be available. Every day, I think about the wonders of the iBOT and how even a portion of that quality, technological whizardry, and robustness could benefit these folks who depend on the chairs and scooters for some quality of life each day.

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

This is unbelievable. What a closed minded system we have that would allow this to cease production.

A culture where engineering is embraced, but not at all costs.

[IKE]

I worked for a mobility company (wheelchair accessable vehicles) as my first internship (The Braun Corporation). It was founded by the owner that had personal mobility issues.
While there the most important lesson I saw was sometimes you have to walk in anothers shoes before you can understand. I would ask that members of congress that are going to write policy on what get covered try the alternatives for 2-3 days. The owner of the company I worked at asked another young engineer to pretend for 1 week that his legs were paralized and to use their vehicles and a wheelchair. He gave up after 2 days, and the owner was OK with that because in the two days he had experienced what it was like.

This saddens me because the wrong problem was solved with this resolution. The problem was that the device was too expensive for insurance/government to afford. Their solution was to not cover it. The real solution should have looked into what it takes to get the iBOT from $22K to $10K. I am sure the makers knew what the required volume would be.

This spells bad knews for the Luke Arm. An interesting protest would be to see a march with persons with their arms tied requesting that Congress do the same for a day or two before legislating life changing device...

[KarenH]

The economics of the IBOT is something like this:

Initially, reports said it would cost around $29,000. If they got it down to $22,000, that's a tremendous price drop! The other thing is that retrofitting a house for a standard wheelchair can cost as much as the IBOT--but I suppose Medicare doesn't pay for housing retrofits.

Here in California, I'm seeing more and more homes (in fact, most homes being built these days) that have stairs, and no elevators. When I was a kid, most houses here were one story and had just a few steps up to the front door--but even those would be impossible for a regular wheelchair. As the population ages, and more people have trouble getting around, this is going to be a huge problem.

So I hope that they keep the tooling and design for the IBOT, and will be ready to resume production (maybe of a cheaper, even better version) when things change.

The other thing to keep in mind-- If Congress and Medicare are this bad now, just think what it'll be like if the U.S. gets nationalized health care!

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by KarenH

The other thing to keep in mind-- If Congress and Medicare are this bad now, just think what it'll be like if the U.S. gets nationalized health care!

I really don't want to get into a political debate about national healthcare, but I don't think private insurance covers the iBOT either.

[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by KarenH

The other thing to keep in mind-- If Congress and Medicare are this bad now, just think what it'll be like if the U.S. gets nationalized health care!

I'm sure Congress is well aware of the benefits something like the iBOT provides people with disabilities. Rhode Island congressman Jim Langevin has come to the Boston regional a few times to sing it's praises, and always delivers an inspirational speech about how technology and engineers make lives better through innovation.



The real challenge is making these innovations more accessible to a wider range of people. When the first computers were built, they took up hundreds of square feet, and were only capable of a few specialized tasks. They also carried a hefty price tag, and were only predicted to become larger and more expensive over time. To quote Professor Frink from The Simpsons- "within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them. M-huy."

As I get ready to leave for work, I put my iPhone in my pocket and think back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s. I wonder if anyone back then could imagine the possibility of a device hundreds to thousands of times more computationally powerful than the systems running the Apollo spacecraft, in a size smaller than a wallet.

Looking back at how much life has changed over the last 50 years makes me think ahead to the inventions and innovations that are just now making their way out of development, and wonder what the next 50 or 100 years will bring. The iBOT is a fantastic piece of equipment, though prohibitively expensive for many. Material and manufacturing breakthroughs may one day make such things more accessible, just as it did for cars and computers.