MiVT: QOR360 Ergonomic Sitting Chair

Whether at work, in the car or at home, the average person sits for 12 hours a day. That sedentary lifestyle can have adverse effects on your health. But a local doctor Isn't sitting around waiting for a solution.

We have all heard about the pains that come from sitting at your desk for too long. Carpel tunnel, organ damage, and of course, a bad back.

"Sitting isn't really the problem, it's sitting still that's the problem," said Dr. Turner Osler, a former trauma surgeon at the University of Vermont. But when his days shifted from the operating room to an office chair for statistical work, the back pain started.

"We're supposed to be hunter-gatherers out walking and chasing things. So, our idea was to make a chair that allows you to move while you're sitting," Osler said. "This used to be a perfectly normal basement until this project got the better of me."

For two years Osler, with help from his son Lex, used his knowledge of the human anatomy to come up with prototype after prototype. "And this turned out to be a solution to the problem. If you put it underneath a chair, it requires that you adjust your posture moment to moment," he said. The idea is that it will lead to a better posture and a stronger core. "All from just slipping something like this under the seat of your chair."

That patented rocker is injection-molded in Milton. The plastic plates and seat covers are made in South Burlington, and the QOR360 chairs which used to be assembled in Osler's basement, are now put together at Manufacturing Solutions Inc. in Morrisville.

"We can figure out how to make things a little more cost effectively, save a couple of steps and bring their costs down so they can be more competitive with a Vermont product in the U.S. Market," said Keith Koehler.

They sold 1,000 chairs in six months as far away as New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong. Companies like Burton, Sun Common and Morgan Stanley are customers as well.

"I'm most amazed by the response that people have had to the chair because people have said it's cured them of their back pain. He's never made anything his entire life. How did he make a hit product? I don't know, but yeah it's pretty great to see," Lex Osler said.

"As a surgeon, I was able to operate on about maybe 10,000 people in a career, but if you change the way an entire population sits, you can help tens of millions of people. This is my last chance to make a difference, and it could make a huge difference," Osler said. "This is absolutely the simplest mechanism to give omnidirectional rocking."

One man shaping how you sit.