BedFlex – helping injured servicemen

BedFlex, which has a patent pending, is an innovative but ingeniously simple device that adapts elasticated theratubing already used by physiotherapists in hospitals across the UK, to enable it to be used by patients independently from their beds, without the physical support of a physiotherapist.

This ensures patients can continue to exercise, building muscle tone and strength and taking charge of their own recovery outside their formal physiotherapy sessions.

BedFlex was spawned out of our Apprentice Innovation Challenge, which sees our apprentices working on a huge variety of projects to help charities and their service users. It runs alongside the Charity Challenge – the company’s own global employee fundraising and community programme.

The partner charities present teams of apprentices from across our UK businesses with two problems they would like them to solve.

In this instance the challenges were inspired by real-life situations faced by staff at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham (formerly known as Selly Oak Military Hospital).

A team from our Warton site, led by Project Manager Sean Gallagher, was one of nine to take part in the competition.  Sean and his team had nine months to develop a device. In essence, there were three basic criteria the team had to meet: whatever they produced had to be cheap, easy to clean and robust enough to survive on a busy hospital ward.

The team had a budget of up to a thousand pounds but from day one they said ‘what can we do for a hundred?’

They really were driven by ‘what is the cheapest solution?’, ‘what is the simplest solution?’ and ‘what is going to be the easiest for them to use?’"

Project Manager Sean explains how Bedflex works “The real key to it is the small toggle. We used therabands or theratubing, which are used in hospitals across the UK. They have up to nine grades and hospitals tend to buy them in 30-metre lengths.

“The problem they had was they cut a length of it for a said patient and he was okay using it providing a physiotherapist was there supporting him and holding him to resolve any dexterity issues, or to get around the issues of grip where he had maybe lost a limb.”

“But when the patient left that physio unit, and didn’t have a physio sitting next to them, they didn’t have that capability because the elastic was prone to slipping and coming undone, or even snapping.”

“What we did was design a small toggle which you feed through a series of holes and then around an anchor, whether that’s a chair leg or a bed leg.”

“That secures the banding safely to a bed or chair, or basically any anchoring point, meaning patients can use it on their own, without the need for additional support.”

The device has already won the Make It in Great Britain Challenge – a competition run by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to find the most innovative pre-market products, processes and concepts in the UK.

It is now expected to undergo further trials in Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital, where the therapy team has already spent time using the device on real patients with impressive results.