SOMA: Build for the Life Beyond the Limb
SOMA is a research and learning prototype that shifts prosthetic design from socket-outward fitting to lived-experience methodology. Three guided care journeys, seven research frontier demonstrations, 3D/4D inspection tools, and a continuous care memory that links evidence to design decisions.
A fitting lasts an hour. The limb is worn for a life. That gap — between the clinical moment and the daily reality — is where most prosthetic design loses its user.
SOMA exists to close that gap. Not with hardware, but with understanding.
What SOMA is
SOMA is a browser-based research and learning prototype. No prosthetic hardware is physically connected. No clinical claims are made. The platform uses synthetic examples and concept imagery to explore what prosthetic care could look like if the starting point were the person's day rather than the socket's dimensions.
The methodology is three words: person → experience → design. Not socket → fitting → discharge.
A different starting point
Traditional prosthetic design begins with the residual limb — measurements, casting, alignment. SOMA begins with the person: how they commute, how they navigate stairs, how the fit changes across a full day of activity.
The platform offers three guided human journeys — synthetic users (Maya, Daniel, Leah) whose daily scenarios illustrate the gap between a static fitting and a dynamic life. Each journey tracks elapsed time, pressure in kPa, volume change as a percentage, and reported discomfort on a 0–10 scale across a full day.
The insight is quantitative: a user walking from station to home shows 72.8 kPa normal pressure, -2.2% volume change, and 3.3/10 discomfort at 420 minutes into their day. A static fitting cannot account for this variation. A design methodology that starts with the day can.
Seven research frontiers
SOMA is organized around seven working demonstrations — not product features, but research concepts made interactive:
Sensory return — touch with a way home. Explores how haptic feedback could restore sensation through the prosthetic interface, giving the user information that currently only exists in the biological limb.
Interface sensing — the forces you cannot see. Visualizes the pressure distribution, shear forces, and load patterns at the limb-socket boundary that drive discomfort but remain invisible in standard clinical assessment.
Adaptive sockets — a fit that follows the day. Demonstrates how socket geometry could respond to volume fluctuations across a full day rather than being locked to a single-point measurement taken during fitting.
Muscle interfaces — movement in conversation. Explores how residual musculature could drive prosthetic control through coupled movement rather than isolated signal detection.
Shared control — help at the moment of contact. Models how prosthetic control could blend user intent with environmental sensing at the moment when the limb contacts a surface — stairs, uneven ground, unexpected obstacles.
Regional materials — one socket, different jobs. Demonstrates how material properties could vary across a single socket — rigid where load-bearing demands it, flexible where comfort requires it, optimized region by region rather than as a uniform structure.
Digital-twin concepts — a model that admits the unknown. Explores how a computational twin of the limb-socket system could predict behaviour, flag risks, and simulate design changes — while acknowledging the boundaries of what any model can reliably represent.
3D/4D inspection
SOMA includes spatial inspection tools that go beyond static imagery:
3D inspection — explore components, layers, and design choices in three dimensions. Rotate, isolate, and examine the prosthetic assembly at the level of individual materials and interfaces.
4D inspection — follow scenario evolution through time. Replay how pressure, fit, and comfort change across a day and compare a reference design with a proposed modification before committing to physical testing.
The distinction matters: 3D shows what a design is. 4D shows what a design does.
Continuous care memory
The final section addresses a problem that outlasts any single fitting: care history does not travel with the patient.
SOMA's continuous care memory follows a three-step process:
Understand the moment — replay examples or bring observations from the care journey into a structured format.
Make the question reviewable — link proposed revisions to the evidence that motivated them, creating a traceable decision record.
Keep the care memory — export findings as PDF or editable Markdown, linking evidence to design decisions. What worked, what changed, and why — carried forward to the next fitting, the next clinician, the next chapter.
What SOMA is not
SOMA is not a medical device. It does not diagnose, prescribe, or control prosthetic hardware. It is a research studio — a place where the questions that matter most to the person wearing the limb can be explored, visualized, and documented before they become engineering specifications.
The goal is not the limb. The goal is the life around it.
SOMA is live and free to explore.
Launch MedConsult AI → — clinical workflow platform.
Launch VITAL → — healthcare AI sandbox.
Richard Leclézio
Enterprise Transformation & AI Delivery Leader