Through this series of blogs, we’re exploring how we think about NuroKor in the context of healthcare and clinicians, shining a light on the potential impact of electrotherapy for people living with health challenges. Our last post addressed how our own research is placing us at the forefront of biomedical research. In this article, we’ll share how our technology may provide a cost-effective, drug-free alternative to conventional medication.

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Health Economic Benefits

Numerous studies show that bioelectric medical technologies, such as NuroKor, are effective interventions for pain relief, muscle recovery, wound care and countering muscular atrophy in ageing populations. Due to the promising nature of peer-reviewed bioelectric research, it is clear that by driving an increase in treatment efficiency and lowering costs, this novel treatment method could lead to significant health economic benefits when bioelectric medicine is chosen over, or even used alongside conventional medications.

For example, non-healing leg ulcers are a significant cause of expense to healthcare systems across the world. This costly, chronic condition can lead to adverse patient outcomes, unplanned hospital admissions, and complex management - all of which land a significant cost burden at the door of any healthcare system.

With this in mind, the demonstrated ability of bioelectric technology to treat non-healing ulcers, combined with existing population data has shown that, if applied at scale, NuroKor could (conservatively) save £50,000 per year per NHS clinical commissioning group (CCG) in wound care alone.

With 211 CCGs, a national roll-out could, theoretically, then lead to annual savings of over £10M to the NHS in this one use-case.

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Whilst these are estimated figures, bioelectric technology (in the form of microcurrent) is already being used in the UK NHS for wound care, just not at scale. In an effort to increase the evidence base, increase the chances of wider adoption and further improve patient care, we now have a prospective study planned to enable us to understand and communicate the true potential of bioelectric technology in this exciting new area.

Proving the cost-effectiveness of NuroKor at a health-system level is an important and significant step for us. Whilst providing our devices directly to consumers will always be part of our strategy, the evidence suggests we can make a difference at scale in certain conditions. As we talked about in our last post, we’re led by the clinical evidence and want to make sure that we’re directing our energy in the right places to ultimately bring the most benefit to patients. Given the strength of the evidence for bioelectric technologies in relieving pain, particularly post-operatively, we’re now using that to draw up a health economic model to try to accurately assess the benefit in real-world settings. 

We’re at the very beginning of brand-new bioelectric technologies that have the potential to make a genuine change in the lives of so many, and the benefits can be felt both clinically and financially when we zoom out to systems level. We’re challenging ourselves to consistently prove this and to build upon the evidence by using the latest available data combined with our own studies. In our next article, we’ll be explaining the importance of regulating technology to effectively deliver personalised medicine and pain relief to patients…

About NuroKor:

Founded in 2018, NuroKor is a company committed to the development of bioelectronic technologies. NuroKor develops and formulates programmable bioelectronic software for clinical and therapeutic applications, in a range of easy to use, wearable devices. It provides the highest-quality products, delivering personalised pain relief and recovery support and rehabilitation to patients.