World's Smallest Electric Wheelchair

Electric wheelchairs can cost an arm and a leg (its priced at almost $15,000 or a brand new 2015 Nissan Sentra). On top of the cost of the wheelchair, modifications must be made on your home in order to accommodate the wheelchair and make it handicap friendly. Students from Brigham Young University built a pair of electric wheelchairs that are more affordable for brothers who shared the same genetic condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. The condition causes infants to have overall weak muscles, difficulty achieving developmental milestones and is the most common genetic cause of infant death. Three year old Tanner Jensen and his 20-month old brother Skyler were born with this rare genetic disease and with electric wheelchairs at their current price, it would run their parents a fortune in order to provide them with wheelchairs. The students from BYU challenged themselves to build the world's smallest wheelchair for their senior capstone project. A year and several challenges later, the group was able to construct a miniature wheelchair comprised of PVC pipes for an outstanding $495. This is far cheaper that the $15,000 wheelchair and only weighs 20 pounds and can support a child up to 50 pounds heavy. Due to this significant accomplishment, the group posted their plans on a website called The Open Wheelchair Project and soon, any family with a child in need should be able to afford and build one of their own for their child. This innovation is important in many ways. First, the price of the wheelchair is far friendlier to the pocket than the $15,000 one. Second, since the wheelchair only weighs 20 pounds, you don't really have to make significant improvements to your home to make it handicap friendly since you can just carry the wheelchair wherever you go. Third, we're giving these children an opportunity to explore the world they live in and take in as much as they can. In my opinion, electric wheelchairs should be provided to families who are in dire need because its just not right to be charging them a ridiculous amount of money for something they desperately need for their children. These medical device companies charge so much because they are in a market where they don't really encounter too much competition from other companies. They pretty much have control in the pricing of the device and its nice to see when teams like the one from BYU recognize the fact that its cheap and easy to design these kinds of devices.