#17 Flow: Making tDCS an accessible treatment for depression

Hi friends, 

I’m always yapping on about the need for more innovative treatments in mental health.

Well today, I’m very excited. Why? Because we’re going to explore a company that has not only delivered an innovative treatment for depression but has also built an impressive business around it.

In this post, we dive deep into Flow Neuroscience.

Over the last two months, I’ve got to spend some time with Erin Sivyer Lee, the CEO of Flow. I learned a lot about the Brain Stimulation market, what’s special about Flow, why they want to make tDCS an accessible treatment option for depression and their strategy for making that happen.

I hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it!

And if you do enjoy this post, feel free to share it with someone who would find it useful.

If you haven’t already heard of Flow, they are a small company from Sweden that has developed a Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) headset used to treat depression.

Over 30,000 people across Europe have used Flow and they’ve built a strong evidence base around their treatment - a 2023 RCT showed that 57% of patients using Flow went into remission from depression within ten weeks.

They created a successful Direct To Consumer (D2C) offering which acquired thousands of customers. Then, they leveraged that success to sell to private clinics and government customers. They’ve landed contracts with several NHS trusts and have demonstrated strong adoption with both clinicians and patients.

Impressive stuff.

Their story is full of lessons for mental health businesses and I’m pretty excited about sharing them in this post.

We’ll learn about;

1. Becoming Part of the Depression Treatment Pathway. How Flow are working with the health system to become an integral part of the depression treatment pathways (and why that is so important).

2. The “D2C Bridge" Strategy. Why Flow started off with a D2C Go-To-Market strategy and how they leveraged that to sell to big payers like the NHS.

3. Making Something People Love. The piece most healthcare companies miss and how it benefits your strategy.

4. Flow’s Sweet Spot. As a neuromodulation device company you usually get to choose between low prices, or a robust evidence base. Flow have both.

5. A Business Model Focused on Affordability. Flow are focused on making their treatment as accessible as possible, and that means as affordable as possible. They actually deliver on that promise by building their entire business model around it.

6. The Future of Flow. White space, the US and beyond.

Let’s get into it.

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