Michael Easy’s operation at Cabrini Health in Melbourne took about an hour and needed no general anaesthetic. A surgeon placed a sensor under the skin of his forearm, over the muscles that still fire when he tries to move the fingers and wrist of his missing hand. The sensor reads those signals and sends them wirelessly to a unit worn outside the body, which drives a robotic prosthetic hand.
Easy was the first of two people implanted so far in CYBORG, the first study to implant Phantom X in people. Phantom Neuro, based in Austin, Texas, announced the implants on 20 October.
The device and the study
Phantom X is a muscle interface with three parts: an array of electrodes implanted under the skin over the forearm muscles, outside the nervous system; an implanted unit that transmits their signals; and an external wearable unit that passes them to a powered prosthetic hand.
CYBORG, short for Clinical Evaluation of System for Bionic Arm Gesture Control, can enrol up to 10 adults missing one hand at the wrist or below the elbow, at least a year after amputation. Participants recover for about two weeks before being fitted with a compatible prosthetic hand. The study’s main measures, taken at nine weeks, are safety, how well participants control the hand in a standard assessment, and how quickly they move blocks to set positions in a timed test. Follow-up continues to 21 weeks, and the estimated primary completion date is December 2026.
Michael Lo, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Cabrini, performed the operations. ProMotion Prosthetics and Enable Rehab handle prosthetic fitting, therapy and testing.
Why it matters
Most powered prosthetic hands read muscle signals through electrodes in the socket that rest on the skin. Sweat, poor skin contact and a shifting socket can make those signals unreliable. Rejection is a long-standing problem: a 2007 review of 25 years of studies found a mean rejection rate of 23 per cent for electric prostheses among adults. Phantom Neuro is betting that a sensor under the skin gives a steadier signal from a procedure simple enough to scale. Connor Glass, its founder and chief executive, wants the experience to look “more like a cosmetic procedure than it does neurosurgery.”
Ottobock, the German prosthetics and bionics company that listed in Frankfurt in October 2025, led Phantom Neuro’s US$19 million Series A in April 2025 and took a board seat, bringing the company’s total funding at the time to US$28 million. Phantom Neuro announced in March 2025 that Phantom X had received FDA Breakthrough Device designation, which brings faster review and closer contact with the agency, and a place in the FDA’s Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program, which gives early strategic advice. The company chose Australia for its efficient early-stage trial pathway and plans to use the CYBORG results to support a US investigational device exemption, the FDA approval needed to run a US trial, and a later pivotal trial.
The surface-electrode systems Phantom X aims to improve on already have a US payment route. Since April 2025 Medicare has had a billing code, L6700, for add-on control modules that use pattern recognition to read intended movement from at least three muscle signal sites on a powered arm prosthesis. Its average 2025 fee schedule amount was US$28,931.56. The code was modelled on three products that read the muscles through the skin, Coapt’s Complete Control Gen2, Ottobock’s MyoPlus and Infinite Biomedical Technologies’ Sense, and only products that Medicare’s coding contractor has listed under the code can bill under it.
Not disclosed
Phantom Neuro has not published the exact dates of the implants, any quantitative performance or safety data, or a price. It has not said when it will file for a US investigational device exemption.
What to watch
Whether the nine-week safety and hand-control results are published.
Whether Phantom Neuro files for a US investigational device exemption, and where it runs the US trial.
Whether Ottobock’s role extends from investor to distribution partner.
Whether Medicare accepts an implanted sensor under the L6700 code.
Sources
Primary:
- Phantom Neuro: Phantom Neuro implants neural interface in humans for the first time, 20 October 2026
- Phantom Neuro: Phantom Neuro receives approval for first-in-human clinical study, 15 April 2026
- ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT07325708, Clinical Evaluation of System for Bionic Arm Gesture Control (CYBORG)
- Phantom Neuro: Phantom Neuro secures $19M Series A funding led by Ottobock, 15 April 2025
- Ottobock: Ottobock invests in Phantom Neuro’s pioneering neurotechnology, 17 April 2025
- Ottobock (EQS): Ottobock celebrates successful IPO in Frankfurt, 10 October 2025
- Phantom Neuro: Phantom Neuro receives FDA Breakthrough Device and TAP designations, 6 March 2025
- Noridian (Medicare DME MAC): Upper extremity prosthetic myoelectronic control, correct coding and code verification, 5 June 2025
- Biddiss and Chau: Upper limb prosthesis use and abandonment, a survey of the last 25 years, Prosthetics and Orthotics International, 2007
Coverage:
- IEEE Spectrum: Under-skin implant controls prosthetic arms, 20 October 2026
- Forbes, Naveen Rao: Smart hands, human touch, neurotech tightens grip on robotics market, 20 October 2026
- O&P EDGE: CMS assigns HCPCS code for upper-limb pattern recognition prostheses, 14 January 2025
Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage: