Nike & Sonos Designers Hook Up on Crowdfunding Campaign for “Cur” Pain Relief Wearable

Nike, Jibo and Sonos design veterans have partnered up to create a “Cur” a smart pain relief wearable that wants to provide a solution to chronic pain, something that impacts more than half of the adults in the US.

If you are someone that lives with chronic pain you will understand how debilitating it can be.  Current approaches to managing chronic pain include therapy, drug treatments and perhaps surgery.  All too frequently treatments do not alleviate the underlaying issue and the individual continues to endure debilitating pain.  If you have been there – you get it. Cur, according to the creators, promises a wearable that analyzes muscle and nerve responses to deliver “clinical quality therapy” that claims lasting relief.

“If you have ever suffered from chronic pain, you know how awful it can be,” says Cur CEO and founder Shaun Rahimi. “Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to do the most basic things in your life like opening a door or getting out of bed. I know, because for years I dealt with debilitating arm and back pain until I discovered TENS. The first time I tried a clinical TENs machine I applied the treatment to my neck for 30 minutes and didn’t experience pain in that area for the next two days. With Cur, we wanted to provide consumers living with chronic pain the same immediate relief that you would expect from a $10,000 clinical TENS device, but in a miniaturized and effortless experience that you can use while running errands or playing basketball.”

TENS therapy is a form of nerve stimulation therapy that has delivered promising results for treating muscle, joint and nerve pain. Presently only clinical machines are available meaning you have to schedule an appointment and show up somewhere to get some relief. Cur wants to change all of this by providing an in home solution and at a more approachable cost.

“Since pain is primarily conducted by nerve signals, electrical stimulation that interferes with the pain in a helpful way is the gold standard for therapy,” says Dr. Kevin Stone of San Francisco’s world-renowned The Stone Clinic. “Now that same therapy can be light, wearable and customizable to the patient, which makes Cur extremely attractive.”

Cur is described as light enough and small enough to fit in a purse or jacket pocket and can be used in just seconds at the onset of pain for sustainable, continuous pain relief anywhere, and at any time. The creators explain that Cur will be undergoing clinical evaluations at leading pain institutions including the SOAR Clinic later this year and anticipates FDA clearance around fall of 2015.  If you are interested in the product a pretail crowdunding campaign has been launched today to reserve a Cur for $149 – a 50% reduction in the expected retail price.  If it works, it is priceless.

Cur was designed in partnership with Huge Design, the industrial design studio behind the Nike Fuelband, Jibo robot, and Sonos products who has also designed products for Samsung, Microsoft, GoPro and Google. Cur Inc was founded in San Francisco in 2013 by a team that has over three decades of development experience working at Abbot Labs, Boston Scientific, ATT and Microsoft – so they have the credibility.