Flipod – inflatable cushion that brings relief to both patient and carer

A clever innovative cushion has the potential to bring massive relief to both caregivers and receivers.

During our sleep we all toss and turn. It’s just our body’s way of getting comfortable and we don’t really give it much thought. But imagine if you have to stay perfectly still all throughout the night…

For somebody who has serious mobility issues, adjusting their position in bed may well be impossible without assistance. Lying in an uncomfortable position for long periods of time will likely cause pressure sores and maybe even respiratory problems.

For the carer this means they have to be vigilant and have to get up regularly during the night to turn the care receiver over. The care receiver in turn has to go through the repeated awkwardness of being physically shifted time and again.

Chow Wai Tung Eason is a student of industrial design at the national university of Singapore, and having identified this problem he started working on something that could solve it.

Flipod

Cue: Flipod, an inflatable pillow that automatically flips the sleeping person over without any external assistance. How it operates is not exactly made clear yet, but I put this down to the fact that it is still in the process of being patented.

But essentially what it does is inflate with the aid of a pump to gently turn the sleeping person over. So far it has been trialled with two separate people with excellent feedback from both.

Here in a short video you get to see more clearly what Flipod does and how it works.