By Jennifer Ernst, CEO, Tivic Health
Use of electronics to treat chronic health conditions from heart disease to Parkinson’s is not new. Similar approaches have been used to treat epilepsy, depression, and chronic pain.
However, what’s new is HOW bioelectronic medicine is being used today and in the near future.
What is Bioelectronics?
By providing non-invasive, over-the-counter, targeted treatments in very specific areas outside the body, bioelectronics is quickly emerging as an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs for treating chronic conditions. Among other benefits, these solutions generally eliminate chemical side effects, provide consumers with new options for drug-free treatments, and offer significant cost saving opportunities to healthcare systems.
Benefits of Bioelectronics Therapies
What does the future hold for bioelectronics and what other key benefits can we expect?
1. Non-invasive treatments will take hold as more prevalent first-line treatment choices. There are many non-invasive treatment options now available to patients to treat motor conditions such as essential tremor, mood disorders such as depression, and quality of life issues such as insomnia, nausea, incontinence, and sinus conditions. As consumer awareness grows, bioelectronic medicine will become increasingly prevalent as a mainstream approach to treatment.
2. The general trend is also around consumers having more access to solutions to take more control of their health and to find what works for them. We’ve seen the continued growth in the number of parameters we can monitor our health with today – all contributing to increased understanding of our constantly changing state of wellbeing.
We will see continued growth and evolution in this area of health monitoring, with heath improvement following closely as a natural next step.
3. The holy grail for bioelectronic medical devices is all about providing the consumer with closed loop feedback. A closed-loop system is able to continuously monitor specific bodily signals and make adjustments in real time as the body responds to external conditions, internal states, or to the device itself.
In these instances, the treatment itself adapts to the patient’s biological and perceptive state, allowing for tighter control of symptoms, with fewer side effects.
This is a great foundation for all of us, to be able to see the effects of bioelectronic medicine directly, on our health, via self-monitoring.
4. There will also be continued growth in direct-to-consumer healthcare solutions including self-test diagnostics and personalized healthcare.
There are companies today that bypass the traditional healthcare infrastructure system by offering consumers direct access to healthcare – from prescribing medications for skincare or migraine treatments to self-administered HPV or COVID-19 tests. Tivic and a handful of other companies are also making medical quality, evidence-based therapies available direct to consumers, with FDA oversight.
A Bioelectronic Approach is the Future
These incredibly exciting transitions will revolutionize healthcare and make bioelectronic medicine much more accessible to consumers in the near future.
