Enhancing Wound Healing Through Bioelectric Mechanisms

“A wound is not a passive hole in the skin. It is an electrically active site, and that activity is part of how it heals.”

— Nev Zubcevik, DO, Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer

One of the most underappreciated facts in wound care is that injured tissue generates its own electrical fields. The moment the skin barrier breaks, a measurable current arises at the wound edge, and that endogenous field acts as a directional cue, helping cells navigate to where they are needed. The phenomenon has a name — galvanotaxis — and it reframes the wound as an electrically active site rather than a passive lesion waiting to be dressed.

This matters clinically because the cue can fail. In conditions such as diabetes or advanced age, the wound's native electrical signal weakens, and healing stalls along with it. That observation points to a logical, if still investigational, target: if a faltering electrical cue contributes to a chronic wound, then supporting or restoring that cue might help healing resume.

A bandage dressing applied over a wound. Smart dressings that read and respond

Electrome's work in this area centers on AI-guided smart dressings. The concept is a dressing that does more than cover — it senses. It can track local field strength, oxygenation, and pH, and deliver adaptive electrical pulses that change as the wound progresses through its healing phases. Instead of a fixed protocol applied blindly, the therapy responds to the wound's actual condition.

Four mechanisms are discussed in the research, and I would present each to a colleague with appropriate caution:

“Healing is a coordinated electrical event. The more faithfully we can map it, the more deliberately we can support it.”

— Erik A. Nilsen, PhD, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Directed cell migration — reinforcing the natural electrical guidance that brings repair cells to the site.

Growth factor modulation — influencing the local signaling environment that coordinates repair.

Antimicrobial disruption — unsettling the biofilms that complicate chronic wounds.

Collagen synthesis — supporting the structural rebuilding of tissue.

Access as part of the design

Chronic wounds are a widespread and expensive challenge, and much of their cost comes from repeated specialty visits. Modular, telemedicine-integrated devices could extend competent wound care beyond specialty centers and into homes and community clinics. As a clinician, I see that reach as inseparable from the science: the goal is not only to map a wound's electrical fingerprint and tune therapy across healing phases, but to make that capability available to the patients who need it most.

Skin tissue viewed under the microscope.