US 5,790,997 · Granted 1998-08-11
The Hospital Bed That Moves With Your Body
Hospital beds aren't just flat surfaces—this one has sections that tilt and slide in coordination, so when your head goes up or your legs extend, the mattress stretches and contracts along with your skin instead of bunching up uncomfortably. It's like the bed learning to move with you.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers a bed frame with multiple articulated sections (head, seat, foot) that can tilt and translate independently. What's protected here is the specific mechanism where tilting one section automatically causes others to extend or contract, so the deck surface expands and shrinks in sync with how a patient's body stretches as the bed reconfigures. Anyone making a bed with this coordinated tilt-and-slide action without a license would infringe.
Why it matters
Hospital beds are high-stakes equipment—patient comfort directly affects recovery and skin health. This patent gave Hill-Rom a way to protect a key innovation: the idea that moving sections don't just pivot independently, but work together to match human anatomy. That coordination reduces skin shearing and pressure points, which hospitals care deeply about because they reduce injury risk and liability. It's a mechanical solution to a real medical problem.
Real-world use
Every time a patient in a hospital bed gets their head elevated for eating or their legs raised to reduce swelling, the mattress underneath adjusts its shape to fit—that synchronized movement is what this patent locks down.
Original USPTO abstract
A table including an articulated deck having a head section, a seat section, a foot section and at least one of the sections is coupled to the frame for movement between a generally horizontal position and a tilted position about a first effective axis above a patient support surface of a mattress of the deck. Pivoting and translation of the deck section extends and contracts the deck sections relative to each other to match the expansion and contraction of the skin of patient as the deck sections move between their horizontal and tilted positions.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 5,790,997
- Filing date
- 1995-08-04
- Grant date
- 1998-08-11
- Assignee
- Hill-Rom Inc.
- Inventor(s)
- RUEHL; JOHN W.
- CPC class
- A47C17/162
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