Stair Climbing Aid Devices as Parts of Sustainable Healthcare

An important aspect of a sustainable society is the care of elderly people. For a sustainable society, it is necessary to develop cost-effective, culture-appropriate, and sustainable eldercare services, which should guarantee both safety and quality. It is also important to prolong the time in which elderly people can live independently to contribute to sustainable healthcare. For elderly people, a daily activity, climbing stairs, might be difficult. This paper presents an overview of stair-climbing aid devices. The paper introduces the sustainable healthcare of elderly people. Then, different stair-climbing aid devices are explained and analyzed, ranging from passive ones to high-tech stair-climbing exoskeletons. A prototype of a new solution, which is an Intelligent Crutch, is presented. After elaborating on the design criteria, the detailed conceptual design and the working principle of the device are presented. The presented concept fills a gap between expensive and complicated stair climbing aid devices and simple and cheaper solutions. It is cheaper and simpler than the active, complicated stair-climbing devices but performs almost the same function. The device helps elderly and disabled people to climb stairs alone, thus improving the quality of life of the target group. The study concludes with further development tasks in order to help elderly people and contribute to a sustainable society.