Editors At Large: Permobil K300 PS Junior

• By Laurie Watanabe
• Dec 01, 2007

A pediatric power chair must work on a number of levels. It must meet medical needs as defined by rehab professionals. But it must also please its user, which means it must fit in on the playground, in the classroom and at home.

In other words, a power chair also needs to be cool.

Enter Permobil’s  K300 PS Junior, designed to please parents, clinicians, kids and RTSs who need a growable pediatric chair to fit a range of medical needs.

Start with medical and professional needs. Amy Meyer, Permobil’s pediatric and standing specialist, says the K300 was “designed to accommodate aftermarket seating. People wanted to do Freedom Designs seating or AES (Adaptive Equipment Systems). So that’s one of the thought processes behind the design.”

Meyer says Permobil also wanted a low seat-to-floor height: “Many of the chairs out there that have tilt or other seat functions have a higher seat-to-floor height. Ours is 16.5", whether you have tilt or power elevator or nothing. That’s going to allow kids to be eye to eye with their peers. But if they do need to access higher surfaces, they can do that with our 8" seat elevator.” Seat elevation and 45 degrees of tilt (manual or power) are K300 options.

RTSs will also appreciate the K300’s base, which is Permobil’s adult C300 base with suspension. If a kid outgrows the 165-lb. capacity of the seating system, an RTS can swap it for an adult or Corpus Jr. system without having to swap the base, which is rated to 300 lbs.

This growability means the K300 suits a wide range of users.

“It’s really endless, the population that can benefit from this chair,” Meyer confirms. “The main target is anyone who’s expected to grow or change in size, including young adults.”

But RTSs also know that all the functionality in the world won’t matter if the kid hates the chair. So Meyer says, “Aesthetics are extremely important, and we want to make sure all of our chairs look cool.”

Mehdi Mirzaie, Permobil’s American head of R&D, explains, “Our mission is to put the user in the center and design the product around them. If you look at the PS Junior’s legrests, you see they’re designed for a kid. We know kids drive differently than adults — they can drive into walls and doors — so the legrests are really strong.” The K300 is packed with such family-friendly features as armrests that are angle adjustable up to 40 degrees, so a feeding tray can stay parallel to the floor, even when a child is tilted.

Mirzaie has designed Permobil chairs for 20 years, but he’s also taken inspiration from his own kids: “I know how they deal with things,” he says. “The K300’s base gives kids the freedom to be outdoors more, to get into mud or sand. It’s a tough chair, because we know kids are really curious. They want to touch everything and try everything. This is a great base for a kid, because it’s more stable. It has a little larger footprint.”

Speaking of footprint, the K300’s appearance — in particular, that Popstar Pink — is likely to make a huge impact. Little girls whose friends drive Barbie-style Power Wheels cars can now have cool rides of their own. (The chair also comes in manly Titan Blue, among other hues.)

“Picking out colors and outfits is something people do to be recognized by their peers,” Meyer says. “You look at the K300, the bright colors, the tri-spoke wheel color that matches the shroud color, and it’s just a very cool-looking chair. It’s going to make the kid the talk of the class. It’s going to make them feel proud to be in it.”

Now that’s successful multi-tasking.

Permobil
6961 Eastgate Blvd.
Lebanon, TN 37090
(800) 736-0925
www.permobil.com

This article originally appeared in the December 2007 issue of HME Business.