Flow Neuroscience

Problem

Depression is a significant UK public health issue, affecting one in six adults, often leading to chronic disability, and increased mortality. The current standard treatments face major limitations: nearly two-thirds of patients experience severe side effects from antidepressant medication and over 70% fail to achieve full remission. Psychological therapies are time-intensive, dependent on clinical skill, and may have long NHS waiting times.

The burden is unequally distributed, with ethnic minority, socially deprived, and neurodivergent populations disproportionately affected. Barriers like stigma, language, and mistrust contribute to health inequalities, leaving these groups less likely to be diagnosed or treated. Talking therapies frequently fail to meet the needs of these underserved communities.

There is a critical need for acceptable, effective, scalable, culturally appropriate, and rapidly deployable alternatives to address this massive unmet clinical need and reduce health inequities. Flow seeks to address this gap with an effective, safe, home-based neuromodulation wearable medical device.

Solution

The Flow innovation provides a safe, convenient, home-based neuromodulation treatment for depression combining a wearable headset and a smartphone app. The headset delivers a gentle 2 mA electrical current to the forehead, while the app ensures safe use, symptom tracking, supports behavioural change, and allows secure data upload for remote clinician monitoring. The headset is worn for 30 minutes several times per week according to a pre-defined stimulation schedule.

The Flow headset addresses the significant unmet clinical need for depression treatment by offering an effective, rapidly deployable, and scalable alternative or adjunct to standard therapies. It provides a solution with fewer severe side effects than medication and overcomes the long waiting times and clinical skill dependency of psychological therapies. By integrating flexibly across in-patient, out-patient, and primary care settings, Flow expands access and supports long-term management of depressive symptoms with minimal burden on health services, thus helping to reduce health inequities for underserved populations.

Impact

Aligned with NHS priorities, Flow provides community-based, digitally enabled care that: 

• reduces pressure on specialist services,
• lowers admissions,
• shortens waiting times, and
• improves access for underserved populations. 

Flow has been validated across NHS Practitioner Health and 5 NHS Trusts, including:

• Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT)
• Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT)
• Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT)
• Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH)
• West London NHS Trust

Flow has been used across a variety of care pathways such as perinatal, crisis, neuromodulation, community mental health teams, and primary care.

Pilot evaluations and subsequent embedding into routine care by Trusts like NHFT, LPT, and NHS Practitioner Health have demonstrated clear impact. 

Patients report high acceptability, strong adherence, and confidence in using the device independently, while clinicians value the remote monitoring dashboard for tracking outcomes.

Results from LPT’s Crisis Team show clear evidence of Flow’s: 

• effectiveness (using a range of outcome measures like MADRS-S and PHQ-9)
• being well-tolerated
• reduced suicidal ideation
• helping to avoid admissions

Overall, the innovation is delivering both clear clinical effectiveness and service efficiency gains.