Case Study · Funding & Grants

SocketSense: Horizon EU Funding for Smart Prosthetic Sockets

How we helped write and fund a nine-partner European consortium developing sensor-based, AI-driven prosthetic socket design for amputees.

~€4M
EU funding under the Horizon EU programme (ICT), coordinated by KTH Royal Institute of Technology
9 partners
2 SMEs, 1 large organisation, 2 research organisations, 2 universities and 2 hospitals
36 months
From sensor design to preliminary clinical trials
TRL 5
Validated device level at project end

At a glance

ProjectSocketSense: Advanced sensor-based design and development of wearable prosthetic sockets for amputees
ProgrammeHorizon EU programme (ICT), Research and Innovation Action
Consortium highlightsKTH Royal Institute of Technology (coordinator, Sweden), Swerea IVF, TWI, plus SMEs, hospitals and universities covering sensors, AI, biomechanics and clinical care
Atlantis Innovation roleConcept development, proposal writing and funding support

The challenge

The World Health Organization estimates around 40 million amputees worldwide, a number rising with ageing populations, diabetes and vascular disease. Ninety percent of amputees will wear a prosthetic limb for the rest of their lives, averaging ten hours of use a day, and the socket, the interface between the residual limb and the prosthesis, decides whether that experience is comfortable or unbearable.

40M
Amputees worldwide (WHO estimate), 2.4 million in the EU
35.3%
Of amputees reject their prostheses, largely due to poor socket fit
€1.76bn
Global prosthetics market, with sockets costing €500 to €5,500 each

Socket design remained a manual craft: iterative, slow and dependent on individual prosthetists, with no objective data on the pressures and shear forces acting on the stump during real use.

The solution

SocketSense embedded multifunctional, quantum-technology-based super sensors into flexible socket material, streaming real-time data on the stump-socket interface to AI algorithms that inform evidence-based socket design, with a unified software system for prosthetic clinics and preliminary clinical trials to validate the whole system on above-knee amputees.

From sensing to better sockets

Super sensorsMulti-touch, multi-functional sensors embedded in flexible socket material
→
AI analysisReal-time data acquisition, biomechanical modelling and machine learning
→
Clinical softwareA unified system for prosthetic clinics, validated in preliminary clinical trials

What we did

1. Quantifying the human and market need

The Excellence section opened with hard numbers: amputee populations, rejection rates, market size and socket economics, tying a deeply human problem to a fundable market opportunity.

2. Objectives an evaluator can verify

Every objective carried a KPI and a month: sensors and data communication by month 24, the clinical software system by month 30, preliminary clinical trials by month 36, and a TRL 5 validated device at project end.

3. A value-chain consortium

The nine partners covered the full path from sensor manufacturing (Swerea IVF) and systems integration with AI (TWI) through data and communications (KTH) to the hospitals providing biomechanics expertise and patient access, with SMEs carrying the route to market.

The result

Funded. SocketSense won Horizon EU funding of around €4 million, coordinated by KTH Royal Institute of Technology with nine partners across Europe, running for three years through to clinical validation.

The project delivered sensor-embedded socket prototypes, AI-driven design tools and clinical software, laying the groundwork for evidence-based prosthetic socket design for millions of amputees.

Why this matters for your organisation

Health technology bids win when human impact, engineering credibility and commercial logic reinforce each other. SocketSense shows how we structure all three into a single scoreable narrative.

If you are preparing a Horizon Europe, EDCTP3 or Innovate UK application, we can support concept development, consortium building, proposal writing, evaluator-style review and full submission. And if a project is not competitive, we will tell you before you spend money on it.