Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. You can check out last quarter’s San Francisco round-up here.
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The healthcare industry has changed a lot in recent years. Many providers now offer telehealth options to patients, some of which have been doing so since before the pandemic. While most healthtech startups are focused on general care and mental wellness, Pandia Health is dedicating itself to the needs of those who take birth control, a facet of healthcare that’s often out of reach for many.
“We believe that every woman has the right to make personal decisions regarding their own body,” Dr. Sophia Yen, co-founder and CEO of Pandia Health, said in a statement. “Providing easy access to birth control helps increase the number of women’s success stories, decrease unwanted pregnancies and decrease period problems like PMS and heavy periods.”
Pandia was founded in 2016 by Yen. While preparing a lecture for a group of doctors on how to prescribe birth control, she realized that one of the main reasons people don’t take it is because it’s not readily available. Not only that, but 66 percent of the people who responded to her research survey didn’t even have the necessary prescription to get the medication.
“They didn’t have time to run to the pharmacy every single month during the constrained seven days in advance maximum requirement placed by insurance companies,” Yen told Built In in an email. “My friend [and co-founder] Perla Ni and I realized that this problem was easily solvable. Just ship it to women and keep shipping it, [with] automatic refills, until they tell us to stop.”
Thus the idea for Pandia Health was born. Yen teamed up with her co-founder to create an end-to-end solution that would offer access to online doctor’s visits, written prescriptions and medications delivered by mail.
Providing easy access to birth control helps increase the number of women’s success stories, decrease unwanted pregnancies and decrease period problems like PMS and heavy periods.”
Getting birth control through Pandia is easy. Those without an existing prescription simply fill out an online evaluation and pay a $20 doctor fee. Pandia’s expert physicians then review the questionnaire and prescribe a birth control method that best fits the patient’s needs. Patients can then receive free delivery of their birth control right to their door, meaning no more last-minute runs to the pharmacy at the end of each month.
“No one runs out of birth control on our watch,” Yen said.
A number of prestigious organizations worked with Pandia during its incubation period including Stanford University’s Startx, Springboard Enterprises, Women’s Startup Lab and more.
Pandia has raised $4.3 million in venture capital financing to date, according to the company.
