'Heartache Medication' Songwriter Barry Dean Pushes New Wheelchair Tech

"We realized that if this was going to happen, we needed to do it," he says. "It felt like it had been given to us to do — I don't know how else to say it — so that's when we officially sort of kicked it off and went to work."

Thanks in part to Barry's contacts in the music industry and Jered's product-design history, which includes rockets and dialysis machines, they built a team to handle the production and legal aspects of LUCI, a system that attaches to the best-selling power chairs. It incorporates a sensor, developed in tandem with Texas Instruments, that Barry says is the first nonautomotive millimeter-wave radar device. LUCI uses cloud technology to gauge stability and mobility, and it also provides battery-usage information, which is surprisingly rare in the power-chair industry.

LUCI has obvious safety benefits, and its accident prevention may extend the life of the wheelchair, too. But it also provides psychological support for the user.

"The wheelchair is more than just a thing," explains Barry. "It becomes a part of their body image. We know, after three years of study, it's independence and mobility and freedom. That's what it represents."

The company is marketing LUCI to a network of clinics and taking preorders for delivery in the fall with a suggested retail price of $8,445.

Katherine inspired Barry to write "God's Will," a song that became his first hit when Martina McBride released it in 2004. Now Katherine is key in developing an additional business that brings its own level of inspiration.

"The clinicians are opening their doors," notes Barry, "and saying, 'We want this. We've been waiting for this.'"

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