INTERNAL MARKET RESEARCH AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

By doing our own market research and listening attentively to our customers, we are able to respond to market developments quickly. Life & Mobility has its own product development department. This means we have a lot of internal know-how.

Innovation

Dy developing products itself, Life & Mobility is able to respond well to a changing society. 

Customer focus

Every customer is important. Thanks to adaptations, our products can be adjusted so that everyone can use them. Well, almost everyone; we also have to deal with the occasional exception.

Two examples of market demand that resulted in a product being developed by Life & Mobility:

Example 1: The Blocker, a brake system.
It unfortunately often happens that people in nursing homes who use a wheelchair every day fall. For example because they get up from the wheelchair but have forgotten to put the brake on. The wheelchair then rolls backwards with a fall as the result. An improvement programme in the Dutch healthcare sector called 'Ban de Band' (ban the strap) sought to find good solutions for this without having to fix people in a bed or wheelchair with a fixation strap. One idea that this improvement programme came up with is for the wheelchair to brake automatically when the occupant gets up.

Life & Mobility thought of a product solution for this: the Blocker. This was done in close collaboration with the parties working in the ‘Ban de Band’ programme. The functional solution was tested in the field and improvements have been included in the current Blocker design. Difficulties included the applicability of the system to all possible size variations of the Roxx. Other, unexpected, functional requirements, such as an empty wheelchair being pushed by healthcare personnel, have also been resolved in the design. The Blocker brake system is so appreciated by the branch and the design professionals that we won the Dutch Design Award with it!
Click here for the Blocker

Example 2: The Tracix backrest in the Matrixx seating system.

It emerged that the Matrixx seating system did not offer optimal support for people with a kyphotic posture. Care homes and nursing homes requested a solution through our dealers. In collaboration with major dealers, we defined the functional requirements of that group of users. The result is the Tracix: an adjustable back support that can be used for a very wide group of kyphotic people, but also for people with other back support needs. The tracix backrest was tested in the design phase by the users to get immediate feedback. Not only from the occupant, but also from therapists and care providers. This feedback has been incorporated in the end result.
Click here for the Tracix