Disability scheme will ‘drive innovation for all’

When biomedical engineer Jordan Nguyen developed his first prototype for a thought-controlled wheelchair, the add-on technology cost him $40,000.

Jordan Nguyen, 31, has developed a thought-controlled wheelchair. Picture: Hollie Adams

When biomedical engineer Jordan Nguyen developed his first prototype for a thought-controlled wheelchair, the add-on technology cost him $40,000.

Now, just months from the ­release of his next version of the chair, the equipment needed to make it work — cameras and sensors — cost just $4000.

“How amazing a time we live in that we have these mainstream adaptable technologies, many of them open source, smart-tech,” Dr Nguyen told The Australian.

Dr Nguyen, 31, suffered an injury a decade ago that almost paralysed him. He decided to study biomedical engineering and started the social enterprise Psykinetic to develop his projects.

“The National Disability ­Insurance Scheme is fantastic and will provide opportunities to technologists like myself who know we can design things to help,” he said.

“There has been limited funding in the sector and where it did exist it went to purchase assistive technology that already existed.”

Dr Nguyen will speak at the NDIS New World conference which begins in Brisbane today, describing how the scheme’s $1 billion spend on technology will transform the market.

In his opening address, NDIS chair Bruce Bonyhady will liken the $22bn scheme to the famed technological truism “Moore’s Law” — that the processing power of computers will double every two years.

“The NDIS will also have an exponential impact as it has the potential to create a future as ­unimaginable to us today as an iPhone would have been to the astronauts of Apollo 11,” he said.

“Traditionally, the costs of disability services have been ­approached with a short to ­medium-term outlook. As a result, technology has often been seen more as a short-term cost than a long-term investment.”

The rush to innovate in a sector newly flush with cash will vastly improve the lives of people with disabilities but it will have flow-on effects, too. “Disability drives many innovations in technology that go beyond the sector,” he said. “Just have a look at exoskeletons; on one side they give back functionality and on the other, when used in a military context, they give people extra abilities to pick up more than they otherwise could.

“This is a brilliant future ­because I have been working to see more inclusion and freedom in the sector and technology is the way to do that.”