The story of Aergo Health

‘What made you start your business?’

A question that Aergo Health’s founder and CEO Sheana Yu gets asked a lot on her travels whether that be telling her story at innovation events, visiting special needs schools or working with families providing feedback on early prototypes of her products.

So we asked Sheana to put pen to paper (so to speak) and tell us the story of Aergo Health.

This is her story…

‘It’s an interesting question to answer because, by recalling and telling the story, I often feel I’ve time travelled back to the beginning.’

Collaboration with Treloar School

‘It all started with a collaboration with the Treloar School, which is run by the Treloar Trust.

The Treloar Trust provides education, care, therapy, medical support and independence training to young people with physical disabilities from all over the UK and overseas. The aim of the Trust is to prepare young people for adult life, giving them the confidence and skills to achieve their full potential.

I was given the brief of designing a new innovative solution that would enable the students to become more independent with daily living.

Part of Treloar’s core work is to provide their students with the skills and ability to live independently and pursue their desired career despite their disabilities. 

To truly understand the students’ needs, I began observing their interactions in school and met a pupil who kindly offered me his freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

I noticed that he struggled to sit up so he could speak to me more comfortably, and later learned that this was a constant battle with his prescribed wheelchair.

I spent some time with him learning about his experience growing up with Cerebral Palsy and some of the challenges he faced on a daily basis especially in relation to his posture.

It struck me during those conversations with this young person just how knowledgeable he was about his health and his future. He explained to me that good posture for him (and lots of other children and young people with physical difficulties) impacted on his ability to breathe, digest food and also to communicate.

He also explained how important having good posture today would mean a brighter, happier, healthier future living with Cerebral Palsy.

Keen to learn more, I continued this conversation with the Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists at Treloar School.

I discovered that children with severe disabilities can sometimes need to be repositioned every 15 minutes by a therapist or trained healthcare professional.

Growing up with scoliosis due to a childhood accident, I had some understanding of how it feels to not sit comfortably. But I could only imagine what it must be like to not be able to move yourself in to a more comfortable position and have to rely on others to reposition you.

This is why I wanted to create a better seating solution for young wheelchair users…

So I created Aergo Health to allow me to develop my idea for a responsive postural seating solution.

Early prototyping of the Aergo PS

One that allowed children and young people with physical difficulties to be more independent and also children with both learning and physical difficulties to be repositioned with little to no hands on support by their caregivers.

That chance conversation has led to the launch of an exciting new postural seating system with many additional feature from that initial idea.

I’m extremely proud to launch the Aergo PS combining air cell technology with app functionality as well a web-based portal developed for Clinicians.

You can find out more about the Aergo PS here.

During my work with children, I was often asked by adults if I could develop a product for them too. Ideally one that would ‘overlay’ their existing wheelchair seats and backrests and the idea for Aerseat was brought to life!

I am so excited for 2024 and the official launch of Aerseat!

If you’d like to be the first experience it you can join our waitlist here.