WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- During a trip to her dentist, Leah Kentt?maa-Squires - a recent Purdue University industrial design graduate - thought of a new kind of dental and medical chair that makes medical equipment easier to maneuver and transport.
"When I got home I researched on the Internet about what's on the market, what's been used and what are the problems," she said. "Then I interviewed dentists and doctors about what they needed to treat patients in Third World countries."
The result is Mantis, a patent-pending portable medical chair that can be used for orthodontic care, physical treatments and medical examinations. It can be folded into a dolly to carry medical supplies needed by physicians and dentists working in less-than-ideal hospital-regulated environments. The chair's components include an adjustable headrest, and it gives occupants the ability to lean back in an ergonomically correct position for full-body extension for dental or medical care. It also is lightweight for transportation purposes.
"We call the chair the Mantis because of its design to morph into different shapes for different uses," Kentt?maa-Squires said.
She collaborated with Purdue graduate student Kyle Amick to build the chair.
"Traditional, stationary dental chairs are motorized to move up and down or tilt, but we created a 3-D model on a computer to determine how to begin designing Mantis," Amick said. "Then we worked on a scale model of a dental chair that could be converted into a dolly, and we wanted to create something as mobile as possible knowing there likely wouldn't be portable power sources. So there are no gears or motors in the Mantis."
Once the team had a design, they worked on making it functional and inexpensive. A cost for the chair has not been determined, but Kentt?maa-Squires said it would be considerably less expensive than current chairs used by dentists.
"If we get a manufacturer or licensing agreement, the chair could be on the market within two years," she said.
Mantis is available for licensing or commercializing through the Purdue Research Foundation's Office of Technology Commercialization. Contact project manager Hilton Turner at 765-588-3479, haturner@prf.org or http://www.prf.org/otc for more information.
A video about the Mantis chair is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8a0O7i0fdo
Purdue Research FoundationCynthia Sequin, 765-588-3340casequin@prf.org
Source: Purdue Research Foundation
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