CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Ellis Ferrish was all smiles when she tested out her new wheels.
The two-and-a-half-year-old has mobility issues and thanks to a team of technicians at UPEI, she can now get around much easier with her customized electric wheelchair.
When Ellis was born, her mother, Lori Ferrish, noticed her newborn’s hips were tight, and following an assessment by the pediatrician, it was determined they were dislocated.
That initial assessment would be the first of many examinations, temporary diagnosis and surgeries the little girl would undergo.
Ellis recently underwent genetic testing and was given a tentative diagnosis of central core disease, which is in the muscular dystrophy family, making her muscles weak and leaving her with limited movement in her legs.
Ferrish and her husband, Trent, wanted their daughter to enjoy a relatively typical life and be able to play with her brothers Nolan and Jonah.
However, since Ellis’ legs don’t function the way they should, her lack of mobility wouldn’t allow for that to happen, so Ferrish said she and her husband looked into getter her a motorized wheelchair.
“I’m not scared of wheelchairs because I deal with people who are in wheelchairs all the time, and I definitely saw the benefit of her having early mobility versus having her wait (until she was bigger),” said Ferrish, a physiotherapist. “I knew that cognitively she was really smart and she needed to be able to explore her environment like any other child. It just was going to be a modified way.”
The problem was, however, that because of Ellis’ tiny frame, there were no power wheelchairs on the market that would fit her.
Figuring she had nothing to lose, Ferrish messaged the School of Sustainable Design Engineering at UPEI to see if anyone would be able to help.
She was in luck.
After meeting with the family and finding out what they were looking for, the technicians from the university got to work and the Ellis Project was born.
Tyler Gallant, industry research engineer and lead technician on the project, and his team spent the summer building a small, customized battery-operated wheelchair for Ellis.
Because pink is Ellis’ favourite colour, the team made the chair pink using a 3D printer to create the plastic body, which took 24 hours to print.
The chair operates with the use of a joystick and has omni wheels on the front to allow it to do a zero point turn.
This is the first project of its kind Gallant had the opportunity to work on, and he said being a part of it has been “rewarding”.
“It’s been an exciting project to work on all around. It’s great seeing Ellis drive it around and be happy, and it was great to be able to do that for her. It just seems like a win for everybody.”
Allan Dale, director of industry partnerships at UPEI, said community projects such as the Ellis Project are part of the school’s mandate.
“We’re trying to connect our students with community on so many levels because one of our goals here at the school is to produce engineers that are not only technically ready to go to work, but are also socially aware, they’re connected to their community, they’re globally aware.”
While it’s normally the students who work on the projects, in this case it was the instructors because of the advanced nature of the project, he said.
“This technician team this year took on the Ellis Project as their own personal journey to work effectively together as a team and get to know one another, because they’re brand new.”
While he wouldn’t give an exact cost of the project, Dale said the technicians were able to keep costs down.
“We had access to a lot of material here that we could repurpose and reuse and retool. A great majority of the project was indeed recycled.”
Dale said there is a “very sophisticated process” for people looking to get involved with the community projects, which involves bringing the project to the team where they determine whether the project can be done.
“If there’s people out there and have got something in mind that they’d like to do, just contact us and we’ll see if it fits within our clinic model. Not everything will, but if it doesn’t, we can probably help them on a path to find another solution. We provide solutions up here, we don’t turn people away.”
Thanks to Gallant and his team, Ellis now has mobility, something her mother is grateful for.
“Once you give a child that ability to explore their environment, it’s amazing,” Ferrish said. “It’s not just that ability to get from point A to point B, it’s the independence part and that’s the part that we saw with her, so it’s pretty special.”
