Socketsense

Revolutionising prosthetics for everyone

There are over 3 million lower limb amputees in the UK, Europe and USA with this figure on the rise. Despite advances in prosthetics, many amputees continue to reject or show a low satisfaction with their prosthesis.

35.3% of amputees with a prosthesis do not wear it on a regular basis due to comfort issues, and amputees struggle to maintain their independence. They often suffer mental health issues, with over 30% of amputees suffering from depression. Psychological morbidity, decreased self-esteem, distorted body image, increased dependency and significant levels of social isolation are some of the other issues that affect these patients.

Challenge

Amputees can be prevented from wearing their prosthesis because of a number of socket-related issues, such as poor comfort, reduced biomechanical functionality, and hampered control. Skin lesions also occur in 63-82% of lower limb amputees, causing many to simply abandon their prosthesis. Large pressure gradients within the socket can also cause soft tissue inflammation and bursitis.

In many cases, reshaping the prosthetic socket to reduce the pressure on patients can resolve these complications. It's important to recognise and treat skin lesions on the residual limbs as early as possible.

More often than not, discomfort from lower limb prosthesis use is due to a poor socket fit. Ideally the socket must be able to provide comfortable load distribution across the residual limb, as well as stability and mobility control.

Solution

The SocketSense project designs, develops and manufactures innovative multi-touch and multi-functional conformable sensors that can be embedded in prosthetic sockets for patients to wear every day.

It uses advanced biomechanical algorithms to analyse residual tissues and dynamic sensor data to design and manufacture an optimised comfortable prosthetic socket. It also develops a data communication strategy for data collection, transmission, analysis and for the output to be accessed automatically by prosthetic clinics, as well as consolidating all data in a unified software system.

SocketSense prosthetics sockets fit well and offer comfort and stability. By developing innovative sensors inside the socket, we can provide the status of the residual limb tissue of individual amputees in real-time. The objective for the SocketSense system is to generate a socket that fits perfectly within the same day as requested by the patient . The comfort software can be continuously improved with higher level of real-world information, with the potential for the early detection of clinical problems and long-term monitoring of mobility.

Impact

Individual patients have individual needs. Some patients are capable of properly managing their need for healthcare. Other patients may ignore potential problems until there is permanent damage to their health. To address this difference healthcare professionals have resorted to scheduling regular visits for patients whether it is needed or not.

Long-term use of a socket monitoring system may lead to a more personalised healthcare service. The system can detect important factors regarding the development of the patient. The long-term monitoring application can provide rich information that can help catch problems early on and prevent catastrophic consequences of incorrect use of the medical device. The ability to pinpoint problems will also help reduce costly high severity injuries, making it applicable in a wide range of clinical areas.