Principal investigator: Prateek Grover
University: Pennsylvania State University, College of Medicine
Industry partners: Humotech, LLC
This project advances data-driven prosthetic prescription by evaluating a standardized “test-drive” process for prosthetic foot selection using Humotech’s Caplex system. Prosthetic foot selection is currently guided largely by clinical intuition, contributing to variable patient outcomes, device switching, and inefficient use of healthcare resources. Penn State will partner with Humotech and Highmark to implement and evaluate an emulation-based clinical workflow that enables patients to trial multiple prosthetic foot options in a single session while capturing experiential and biomechanical data. Public health, health systems science, and policy graduate and undergraduate students, supervised by Penn State faculty, will coordinate data collection and analysis for clinical and economic outcomes. A health systems consultant will support cost-effectiveness evaluation. Pennsylvania-based prosthetics providers, Lawall and Ottobock, will assist with device fitting and clinical integration. The project will generate real-world evidence on feasibility, patient benefit, and cost implications while establishing a scalable university-industry collaboration model.