Nurx, a telemedicine startup based in San Francisco, now offers direct-to-consumer HPV testing kits, TechCrunch reports.
Here are five notes on how the new service expands Nurx's reach:
1. Nurx launched in 2015 with the mission to deliver oral contraceptives to women across the U.S. Through the Nurx app, a patient can select their preferred brand of birth control pills and answer a set of questions about their healthcare needs and insurance. From there, a physician in their state reviews the request and writes a prescription, and the medication is delivered to the patient by mail.
2. Today, Nurx is live in 22 states and Washington, D.C., and Nurx has expanded its services to include emergency contraception and the HIV-prevention medication PrEP.
3. Nurx introduced the new HPV test to current customers Dec. 4, and plans to roll out the service to new customers in 2019.
4. The HPV testing kit is not mean to be a replacement for a Pap smear, a form of cervical cancer screening. However, some clinicians see HPV tests a a potential "upstream" screening method, since HPV is the root cause of almost 12,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year. Nurx hopes the service will help support women who cannot regularly access Pap smears or who have not been vaccinated for HPV.
"Our mission here is to leverage telemedicine to change public healthcare," Nurx co-founder and CEO Hans Gangeskar told TechCrunch. "We are building a full-stack primary care telemedicine platform at an unparalleled cost."
5. Nurx is backed by an estimated $42 million in venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures, Lowercase Capital and others.