Mental health conditions are a serious medical issue for military service members and veterans. More than half a million active-duty U.S. service members were diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder between 2019 and 2023, a nearly 30% increase in just five years.

Conditions like anxiety, insomnia, and pain are commonly managed with prescription medication, but both patients and clinicians are understandably apprehensive about long-term reliance on drugs. Medications such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) or benzodiazepines can cause dependency and withdrawal challenges, cognitive side effects, and diminished quality of life. In addition, long-term opioid use for pain management is linked to higher risk of suicide attempts by veterans.

But there are safe, effective alternatives to medication, such as Electromedical Products International’s (EPI) Alpha-Stim medical device. This FDA-cleared technology delivers cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) to address anxiety and insomnia by modulating brain activity, and microcurrent electrical therapy (MET) to treat pain through targeted, non-invasive electrical stimulation without medication. Users report a 94% decrease in anxiety, 43 more sleep minutes, and a 71% average pain reduction.

Proven results gave EPI commercial leadership confidence that the device would be an effective treatment option for veterans seeking to avoid long-term prescription use. But they lacked data on how many VA patients were diagnosed with anxiety, pain, or insomnia and where these patients were being treated.

Shedding Light on the VA’s Closed System

The VA is one of the largest integrated delivery networks (IDNs) in the U.S., with 170 medical centers and nearly 1,200 outpatient sites. These facilities managed over 78 million appointments in 2024.

Medech companies can improve veteran healthcare on a large scale with their innovative technologies. Unfortunately, companies like EPI struggle to reach VA patients because the VA operates as a closed system. Critical data such as procedure volumes, provider information, and site of care details are generally excluded from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and commercial claims datasets that medtech companies rely on to make strategic decisions.

Often, the biggest barrier these companies face is not proving clinical results, securing reimbursement, or navigating the contracting process—it is a lack of awareness of where their potential patients are being treated.

Access and Availability, but Not Adoption

EPI secured a new five-year, $175 million Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contract, a key milestone for reaching VA patients. The FSS program is designed to expand treatment options across federal health systems by allowing approved medical technologies to be accessed through streamlined, pre-negotiated procurement channels. For EPI, the award established a clear and scalable pathway for federal agencies and authorized purchasers to acquire its FDA-cleared Alpha-Stim devices.

The FSS contract allowed VA physicians to prescribe Alpha-Stim, and early anecdotal feedback was promising. Liz Mataraza, EPI customer care manager and a U.S. Army veteran, heard directly from hundreds of patients who experienced relief after using the device. “Alpha-Stim has changed their lives,” she attested.

EPI knew that if they could educate the right clinicians and patients about Alpha-Stim’s benefits, they could help more veterans. The team originally tried to understand the market by sending distributor sales representatives to visit facilities one by one in their territories. This manual process took significant time and effort and had unpredictable results. Sometimes EPI representatives got lucky, visiting the right VA location on the right day and engaging with the right clinician. Many times, they did not.

Equally frustrating, EPI leadership could not derive insights from their valuable FSS contract due to the unique VA procurement process. Device orders typically flow through a prosthetics department purchase order. So even at a facility where Alpha-Stim was already being prescribed, EPI did not understand which clinicians were driving adoption and could help expand product use. As Mataraza explained, “we did not have sufficient visibility into prescribing patterns across individual VA facilities.”

EPI realized that access does not equal visibility, and availability does not mean adoption. They were hitting a wall without clear data that could point them in the right direction.

Community Care—An Opportunity and Challenge

Even as EPI was reaching many patients in the sprawling VA system, the company was pursuing a secondary market that was even harder to understand.

The 2018 MISSION Act expanded care options outside of VA-managed sites of care. Veterans could seek treatment at approved facilities like urgent care clinics, chiropractor offices, community care centers, and more. The program has been remarkably successful, with 48 million community care appointments completed in 2024 alone.

For EPI, this created a significant opportunity: many veterans were being treated for anxiety, insomnia, and pain in these alternative settings, and community care providers were now authorized to prescribe Alpha-Stim in most states.

Although the VA website provided the names and addresses of eligible sites of care, there was no corresponding diagnosis or treatment data available. It would take EPI years to build a thorough understanding of the community care market if they relied on reps to manually build a database site by site and clinician by clinician.

Opening the Black Box

Medtech companies are increasingly relying on intelligent platforms with deep market data to identify priority targets quickly and efficiently, instead of laborious field work with unpredictable results. Modern platforms help leaner companies, such as EPI, save critical time and resources, as well as uncover their best opportunities.

EPI found an intelligence platform that aggregated timely data from many sources, including VA data, which other platforms do not have. Having that key data enabled them to replace guesswork with systematic targeting. They could now identify VA physicians with high volumes of relevant diagnoses, understand how they were treating patients, and see where those clinicians were geographically concentrated.

Using data-driven insights, EPI was able to identify areas with concentrated unmet need and prioritize outreach more effectively. These insights were incorporated into existing commercial workflows, helping teams act more efficiently on priority opportunities. “The added visibility allows us to better focus our efforts, save time for our field teams, and consistently increase the effectiveness of our commercial approach,” explained EPI President Brian Burke.

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Reimbursement Data Reveals Additional Demand

EPI’s new intelligence platform also provided the company with reliable VA payer data, which surfaced the community care facilities and providers treating key patients under the MISSION Act. Detailed data on the diagnoses and treatment at these facilities also made it possible for the marketing team to collaborate with sales to develop messaging tailored for each facility’s distinct services and patient population, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.

As a result, EPI multiplied the impact of its community care outreach strategy.

“Reps may visit a single clinic and engage with multiple relevant clinicians they might not have identified otherwise. The data helps make each interaction more meaningful,” Burke explained.

Targeting community care provides another benefit, as many clinicians at those facilities also treat non-VA patients. “As we gain better insight into these clinicians, we often discover that they practice across multiple locations, extending the reach beyond a single site,” Mataraza noted.

What began as a strategy to reach more VA patients became an avenue to a broader patient base without requiring extra resources or diluting EPI’s core strategy. By pairing its existing clinical and commercial strategy with improved market visibility, EPI was able to expand its reach more efficiently.

A Repeatable Playbook for New Markets

Alpha-Stim has a wide range of clinical fits, from psychiatry to rheumatology to dental patients with procedural anxiety. Success with VA and community care facilities has created a repeatable playbook that EPI can use to expand into other markets.

For example, rich data helps EPI understand which adjacent therapeutic opportunities are worth pursuing and which may not provide enough ROI. The same approach has helped EPI evaluate market opportunities where non-invasive options may reduce patient burden.

Procedure data is also helping EPI understand how many treatments are performed for FDA-approved Alpha-Stim indications, where demand is concentrated, and collaborate with marketing and sales on coordinated outreach around convenient at-home care options.

“We have witnessed incredible upside in potential and growth since implementing a modern intelligence platform,” said Burke. “We now have a bigger market and greater penetration.”

The Big Lesson for Medtech Leaders

As healthcare becomes more complex, traditional sales methods like relationship selling or pounding the pavement to learn a territory are neither efficient nor effective. Commercial teams need precise data that helps them quickly uncover their best opportunities and create smart strategies to capture those opportunities.

EPI had a better way to treat patients, but not an efficient, reliable way to find them until data showed the way. Data allowed EPI to strategically target areas of high demand, unlock rapid growth, and reach more veterans.

Clinical innovation is essential, but not enough. The right data gives commercial teams a richer, clearer understanding of market fit and customer needs. As healthcare expands across new settings, medtech organizations that leverage intelligence platforms can identify opportunities faster, execute with precision, and ultimately deliver their innovations to the patients who need them most.

Lee Smith is the co-founder and Vice President of Customer Experience at AcuityMD. Prior to launching AcuityMD, he worked in various commercial roles at Zimmer Biomet and Medtronic across orthopedics, spine, and trauma. Lee received his B.A. in Economics from Bates College. He can be reached at lee@acuitymd.com.