Living with diabetic neuropathy means far more than just discomfort. It’s a daily struggle with pain, loss of sensation from the feet, and the constant threat of serious complications like falls, ulcers, and amputations. Roughly half of all diabetes patients experience this debilitating condition, which can drastically reduce quality of life and increase mortality.
Current treatment options remain insufficient, leaving doctors with limited choices that primarily involve recommending lifestyle changes to manage glucose levels and slow the progression of the disease. Sensars is changing this reality by providing an innovative solution that restores the protective sensations patients need to prevent devastating outcomes while addressing pain.
Conventional Treatments Fall Short
Diabetic neuropathy remains an underserved market in neuromodulation. Medications come with unbearable side effects. Non-invasive medical devices monitor foot conditions without offering real therapeutic intervention. Implantable stimulators like Spinal Cord Stimulators (SCS) and Peripheral Nerve Stimulators (PNS) focus on treating pain without restoring sensation, a critical factor for preventing complications like falls and ulcers. Sensars’ SENSY system fills this gap, providing the sensory restoration needed to prevent life-threatening complications.
MIT Innovator Award winner and Sensars co-founder Francesco Petrini explains, “At Sensars, we offer the only implantable stimulator that stimulates directly inside the nerve, reactivating a physiological link with the brain that restores sensation in patients’ feet. This helps prevent the ulcers, falls, and amputations that current technologies fail to address.”
By stimulating within the nerve, Sensars’ intraneural technology offers unmatched precision and reliability that is impossible with available SCS or PNS, and that prevents those approaches from restoring sensations. Guy Siman, Sensars’ co-founder, adds, “Device misplacement is a common issue with other technologies, but our solution ensures stable electrodes, delivering consistent therapy that restores touch sensations and prevents complications.”
Restoring Sensation with Micro-Wire Technology
Sensars restores the natural sensations, a critical factor in protecting patients from further harm. This is vital for those suffering from diabetic neuropathy, where sensory loss in the feet can lead to ulcers and even amputations. Sensars’ unique micro-wire technology is a game-changer in this regard. Far smaller than traditional devices, these micro-wires are implanted directly into the nerve and connected to a 32-channel stimulator, ensuring targeted and effective stimulation.
The system integrates seamlessly into a patient’s life. Through an app, patients and healthcare providers can manage the device while embedded sensors in the insoles monitor movements, ensuring that therapy adjusts in real-time to the patient’s daily activities. This feedback loop creates a highly personalized treatment experience that not only reduces pain but also restores the critical sense of touch, allowing patients to regain confidence in their mobility and avoid dangerous falls, ulcers, and amputations.
The Market Is Ripe for Sensars
Sensars’ treatment for diabetic neuropathy also has enormous potential to save the healthcare system billions. Complications such as pain, ulcers, falls, and amputations cost over $73 billion annually in the EU and USA. Still, current devices fail to restore sensory feedback, leaving patients vulnerable to these devastating outcomes.
With no effective alternatives, doctors can only advise patients to inspect their feet constantly — a task they rarely perform consistently. As a result, preventable ulcers lead to infections, amputations, and further complications. Around 1 million patients in the EU and USA alone with sensory loss actively seek medical help each year, highlighting an immense and underserved market.
Sensars’ SENSY system changes everything. By restoring natural sensation and preventing complications, it is set to command a premium price, similar to SCS and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) devices, which cost approximately $60K on average. But SENSY offers something those devices cannot — lasting sensory restoration and the potential to significantly reduce healthcare costs.
“The gap between available treatments and the real need is staggering,” says Petrini. “Loss of feet sensation disrupts the life of 1 million people every year, yet the current options fail to restore sensation.”
By delivering true sensory restoration and preventing severe complications, Sensars is unlocking a multi-billion-dollar market. With its potential to transform patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs, SENSY is the solution doctors and patients have been waiting for.
Looking ahead, Sensars’ technology extends beyond diabetic neuropathy. Its intraneural platform could address other neuropathies, chronic pain syndromes, and even conditions like epilepsy and metabolic disorders through vagus nerve stimulation, offering precise treatments with fewer side effects.
