By Ken Mayer, Co-Founder, Electro Therapeutics Corp
—
A Spark at the Edge of Medicine
It didn’t begin in a lab. It started in a conversation.
Dr. Nevena Zubcevik—Harvard-trained, a neurologist by training and a systems thinker by instinct—was explaining something that felt equal parts ancient and futuristic. She told me biology wasn’t just chemistry. It was voltage. Signals. Gradients. Bioelectric fields shaping how tissues form, how wounds heal, how the brain rebuilds after trauma.
I’ve worked across digital health, data architecture, and biotechnology for decades. I’ve built companies. But I’d never heard medicine described this way—not as a set of biochemical interventions, but as an operating system that runs on electrical code.
I listened. I asked questions. I read—starting with Robert Becker’s The Body Electric, then Sally Adee’s We Are Electric, and David Sinclair’s Lifespan. I watched lectures by Dr. Michael Levin at Tufts, who has shown again and again that cells can be reprogrammed—limbs regrown, organs redirected—not by altering genes, but by adjusting voltage gradients.
Something shifted. This wasn’t science fiction. It was science we’d overlooked.
And when Nev asked me to help co-found a company to pursue it—to build the first fully programmable platform for bioelectric therapy—I said yes.
Decoding the Electrome
There’s a term for this new frontier: the Electrome. Not a metaphor, not a thought experiment—a real, measurable system that governs how biology organizes itself.
Every cell has a resting membrane potential. Every organ pulses with electric rhythms. The body is, in essence, an exquisitely tuned electrical network. For a century, we’ve focused on chemistry—pharmaceuticals, genomics, and the central dogma of molecular biology. But all along, another layer was there, hidden in plain sight: electricity as the first language of life.
At Electro Therapeutics Corp, our goal is to decode and harness this language. With Nev leading our clinical strategy and biophysicist Erik A. Nilsen heading our engineering and signal science, we’ve built a platform to deliver precision bioelectric therapy—wearable devices that send specific frequencies to tissues, controlled by software, informed by real-time data.
The Electrome Knowledge Graph, a continuously evolving dataset, maps which frequencies trigger which responses in which tissues under which conditions. This is not anecdotal wellness—this is scalable, trackable, and increasingly peer-reviewed science.
Why 27.12 MHz Keeps Coming Up
You’ll hear a lot in this series about 27.12 megahertz—and with good reason. It’s one of three FCC-cleared ISM frequencies for medical use, originally used for diathermy but now gaining attention for entirely different reasons.
Research from Harvard-affiliated hospitals, MD Anderson, and the VA health system has shown that when properly tuned, this frequency does something remarkable: it reduces inflammation, accelerates wound healing, and—critically—reduces opioid requirements after surgery.
At the Houston VA, Dr. Sam Awad, Chief of Surgery and one of the nation’s leading voices in perioperative recovery, conducted a retrospective study showing that patients receiving 27.12 MHz PEMF therapy had shorter hospital stays and reduced opioid consumption, without sacrificing pain control.
That signal, and the algorithms we’ve developed to modulate and deliver it, forms the basis of our first commercial programs at Electro Therapeutics. These are not prototypes—they’re real, in pilot clinics, and supported by decades of underappreciated science.
Why I’m Writing This
Bioelectric Science isn’t a product announcement or a fundraising pitch. It’s a field journal—one part roadmap, one part reckoning.
I’m not a physicist. I didn’t grow up dreaming about ion channels. But I know what it feels like when a paradigm shifts. I’ve seen software eat the world. I’ve seen platforms rewrite industries. And I’m telling you now: medicine is next.
This series is my way of making sense of what we’re building and what it could mean. Each volume will explore a different facet of bioelectric medicine: the evidence, the skepticism, the breakthroughs, the possibilities. We’ll speak with researchers, patients, engineers. We’ll examine how signals change cells—and how those cells, in turn, might change everything.
A Market Hiding in Plain Sight
Let’s set aside wonder for a moment and talk numbers.
Chronic pain costs the U.S. $635 billion annually. Neurodegeneration adds another $400 billion. Cancer, over $200 billion. Wound care, $25 billion. And aging—measured not just in years but in lost function—is the biggest prize of all.
Bioelectric medicine won’t replace pharmaceuticals. But it may soon sit beside them. Imagine reducing opioid dosage by 40% with no compromise in pain relief. Accelerating recovery times by half. Resensitizing tumors to chemotherapy. Personalizing treatment in real-time.
Signals don’t expire. They don’t mutate. They can be delivered, adapted, and reprogrammed with the logic of software. This isn’t just a medical revolution—it’s a commercial one.
“We’re not replacing biology. We’re upgrading it,” says Nev.
“We finally have the tools to make tissue programmable,” adds Erik.
As for me—I believe this is the biggest untapped layer in modern medicine. We’re building its interface.
What Comes Next
This series will unfold in a frequency band—not just in prose, but in waveforms, ion flows, and microTesla shifts. In the weeks ahead, we’ll explore:
- How PEMF therapy is being used to reduce opioid dependence after surgery
- How the microbiome responds to electrical fields, and what that could mean for inflammatory disease
- How neuroplasticity can be reawakened in stroke, PTSD, and early-stage dementia
- How tumors may be made vulnerable again, using bioelectric preconditioning
- And how aging itself might be reversible—not by rewriting genes, but by restoring the body’s native electric code
We are not guessing. We are building. We are publishing. And soon, we’ll be prescribing.
Welcome to Bioelectric Science.
Welcome to The Electrome.
—
Citations & Further Reading
- Becker, R. & Marino, A. The Body Electric (1985)
- Adee, S. We Are Electric (2023)
- Sinclair, D. Lifespan (2019)
- Levin, M. (2021). Bioelectric controls of growth and form. Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology
- Awad, S. et al. (2021). Use of PEMF to reduce opioid use in postoperative recovery. Journal of Surgical Research
- Shupak, N. et al. (2006). PEMF at 27.12 MHz modulates inflammation in soft tissue injuries. Bioelectromagnetics
- Electro Therapeutics internal pilot data; FDA 510(k) K181015
For inquiries, clinical partnerships, or media:
�� ken@electrotx.com | hello@electrotx.com