Our Founder's Story

Hello!  Thanks for stopping by this page.  My name is Steve Powell and I am the founder of IndeeLift Inc. The purpose of this page is to tell my story about the driving force behind the creation of the IndeeLift Human Floor Lift.

As a devoted participant in the care of my elderly parents, I have had the opportunity to experience many of the difficulties that come along with aging. My parents, who live in different places, are an important part of my life and consequently I am involved in the medical and day-to-day challenges of aging at home.

My father faced many challenges in the last years of his life on earth. He was typical of many elderly men that have worked hard all of their life.  He suffered from diabetes, dementia, renal failure and numerous other medical issues. He was very lucky that his wife is an experienced nurse who managed his many medical issues with the greatest expertise.

He had some memory issues the last years of his life.  He had experienced numerous mini-strokes that had left him diagnosed with moderate to severe dementia. He was obese most of his life which further complicated his medical issues and managing his physical needs.

My dad suffered with really bad knees for many years and at times would be walking along and his knee would give out and he would just fall on the ground but was able to pick himself back up and get on with his day.  As he aged, he was unable to get off of the floor on his own.

As his health deteriorated, my dad would wake up in the middle of the night needing to use the restroom.  He would sit up, take a step or two and fall on to the floor.  He wasn’t actually able to walk independently. He would wake up and do what he had done for the last 70 years out of habit, head to the bathroom. He fell more times than anyone should! He tried to remember not to get up but old habits are hard to break.

His doctors knew about his falling. They prescribed a sling-type lift to assist in getting him up from floor. It was pretty complicated and required two people along with rolling the fallen over on one side, then rolling them back the other way, attaching heavy chains to the harness and position the big machine over the fallen person.  I picked my dad up a couple of times with this big lift and he became so scared that he would scream to call the fire department. He was afraid he would fall out of the harness while he was suspended in the air.  I was too!

When his mind was clear, he was able to assist a bit in getting up from the floor. In late 2013 my father was falling two to three times a week.  His wife could get help him up for a while but after many falls, she needed more help.  I would come up and help, sometimes a neighbor could help but many times she was forced to call emergency services and have the fire department come. For a number of months, the fire department came out multiple times every week.  My dad would scream in agony because he was so bruised and his muscles were in such bad shape from picking him up so regularly.

They came out a couple of times in the same day and they told his wife that she needed to place him in a facility that was able to care for his issues and pick him up when he fell.  My dad refused to be moved to a care facility. Everyone wants to live in their own home.  People need tools to help them stay in their homes until the end of their life.  His wife worked so hard to keep him at home. Together we did whatever was necessary to keep him at home knowing that he would just die if he was shipped off to a convalescent home. He wanted to pass out of this life at home!

While I was assisting in the ongoing medical difficulties of my father, my 81 year-old mother started falling down at home.  She fell six times during a two-month period. After she would fall, she would scoot across the floor and down the hall to get to the phone.  She lived in a townhouse and, when I was in town, I could just run over and pick her up.  It was a challenge when she fell in the middle of the night. And then she fell when I was working out of town.  I sent my wife over to help but she couldn’t pick her up. She called a friend and together they could not get my mom up from the floor. They called another friend who came over to help. A couple of hours later my mom was up from the floor. She was sore for a week after being stuck on the floor for those couple of hours.

The next time she fell, I was out of town and she had to call the fire department.  The local fire department came out and had to break into her locked house and wade through her house to pick her up from the floor.  They got her up and she was fine but she was horrified that these five men had to break into her house after she had fallen on the way to the bathroom. She wasn’t dressed properly. She was embarrassed and humiliated and did not want to go through that ever again. All she needed was help up! She told me that she would wait for me to get back to town before she would call the fire department again.

I was totally perplexed.  My father was falling multiple times a week.  My mother was falling and had no one living with her and she was stuck for hours until someone could come and help. I searched the world over for a way to help my parents with this problem.  There was no real answer or solution to help get my parents off of the floor.  I went to work to build a solution that could help my stepmom get my dad up from floor and a different solution to help my mom up from the floor without assistance.

I looked at all of the human lifting and transferring equipment that I could find.  Nothing was made to help people up from the floor. I tried everything I could think of. I installed hand grab bars in my mom’s hallway so she could scoot over to them and lift herself off of the floor. She could get around on the floor but she could not get up.  I quickly learned that, while she could get her hand onto on bar, she couldn’t twist around to grab the next bar.  When I helped her grab the second bar, she didn’t have the upper body strength to get three inches off of the floor much less to get all the way up.

That was it.  I needed a machine that would specifically pick people up from the floor.  I scoured the internet for lifts of all sorts for something I could modify to help my mom and dad.  Nothing existed! I took this as a challenge and began thinking about how to build a device that would help both of my parents.

I showed the first working prototype to friends and they told me about the problems they had with their parents falling.  I was not the only one who had a problem with falling elderly parents.  After some research, we determined that there are actually millions of people that can’t get up from the floor if they fall down.  When people fall, many others are impacted. Friends, family, neighbors, emergency services all come to the rescue. There is a tremendous need to help those who have fallen. These people are our family members, elderly, veterans, accident victims, folks with bad knees and hips and many other types of disabilities that are unable to get safely up from the floor.  

After building a working machine, it was necessary to make this solution available to wherever was needed. My father died before I could make a working lift. I wasn’t able to help him personally with the human floor Lift. I have made it my mission to help people all over the world up from the floor.

That was the beginning of IndeeLift Incorporated. We have created a business with a mission to provide Human Floor Lifts for all who need them.  They say “necessity is the mother of invention”.  They are right.  The IndeeLift human floor lift was built to solve a problem that is experienced by millions of people every day.  We believe that we can help those people by providing a simple machine made specifically to safely lift a person of any size from the floor when they have fallen!

IndeeLift human floor lift’s are designed to help mom, dad, and the mobility-challenged stay independent in the privacy of their own home. No need to call for outside when falling at home.  These purpose-built devices are designed to lift people from the floor within a very short time and everyone involved can get on with their day.