Curonix and Sure Med Compliance team up to help curb the opioid epidemic
There were a record 111,000 overdose deaths between April 2022 and April 2023
The opioid crisis spiked during the pandemic, with overdose deaths increasing 35% from April 2020 to 2021. While the COVID crisis has been over for a while now, the rate of overdoses has actually continued to climb, with 111,000 dying between April 2022 and April 2023, a new record.
Two startups that are using technology to help fight this crisis are Sure Med Compliance, a company looking to make it safer for physicians to prescribe pain medications, and Curonix, a company dedicated to easing chronic pain without the use of opioids.
Now they've decided to combine forces, announcing an exclusive partnership for data collection of large-scale, long-term peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) using Perspectives in Care, Sure Med’s electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) platform.
Founded in 2016, Sure Med Compliance works with patients, licensed pain management providers, and life sciences companies, helping doctors comply with regulations that can stand in the way of treating patients
For example, to meet the medico-legal requirement for prescribing opioid therapy, a doctor must determine and document up to 26 pieces of patient data each time they issue a prescription. Some of these data points involve administering validated assessments, which can take five minutes each while, on average, pain management doctors report that they spend less than 10 minutes with patients on medication management visits.
Perspectives in Care solves this by collecting the majority of that required data from the patient prior to their next office appointment in under 15 minutes. Once the patient submits their responses they are then scored, summarized, and instantly delivered to the patient chart. That way the physician already has this information when the patient is sitting with the patient so they can use that data to help influence a safer prescribing decision and it mitigates risk to the provider by completing necessary chart documentation.
So far, more than 40,000 patients have already been enrolled in Sure Med’s Perspectives in Care program.
Curonix’s Freedom System, meanwhile, is a permanent implantable system that offers pain relief for injuries to knees, shoulders, lower back, and the spine.
The Freedom Peripheral Nerve Stimulator System is indicated for pain management in adults with severe, intractable chronic pain of peripheral nerve origin. It uses high-frequency electromagnetic coupling technology to power the implanted neurostimulator. The device uses pulsed electric current to create an electrical field that acts on nerves to inhibit the transmission of pain signals to the brain. The company says that its devices have resulted in a 47% reduction in medication usage at 24 months.
Using Perspectives in Care, Curonix will partner with physicians and their teams to collect and analyze PNS data to further support the efficacy of the device.
“There is a need for clinical data and outcomes to make it easier for physicians and patients to navigate a patient's chronic pain journey,” John Bowman, founder and CEO of Sure Med Compliance, said in a statement.
“By partnering with Curonix to support collection of clinical data on the effectiveness of PNS therapy, Sure Med will be advancing our goal of helping to lessen the industry’s reliance on traditional opioid therapies for the treatment of chronic pain.”
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