Drop 1: Safely, the app that's innovating sexual health care
🔬 Hi there, welcome to hi gray's first dispatch!
Hi there and welcome to the very first drop of hi gray, a newsletter for and about the new direct-to-consumer health world. Starting today, we will be releasing a brand new Q&A with a founder or leader of a startup every Sunday morning. We’ll chat idea conception, branding, trend breakdowns, current events, and more. Consider this your go-to resource for the new consumer health world. And if you’re reading this, a huge thank you for being one of our first subscribers! We’d appreciate any word you can spread about hi gray to the health innovation or startup enthusiasts in your life.
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So without further ado, let’s get into it.
Safely App
Safely, a Los Angeles-based telemedicine company, is trying to take the awkwardness out of STD testing. The app lets users upload medical records, schedule testing with a provider, and share results with potential partners using a private and secure platform. With 90,000 current users based in the United States, Safely’s goal is to become the one trusted platform where users can have secure and private conversations about their STD status. Initially started in 2016, Safely spun out years later after a restructuring, now with 13 full time employees and 43 contract-licenses doctors across the country. Safely has raised $5 million to date.
We sat down with their CEO and founder Lauren Weiniger to chat about how Safely is innovating the sexual health space, its upcoming addition of COVID-19 testing, and how it’s all just the first step to making simple diagnostics more accessible to consumers than ever before.
Hi Gray: We’re really excited about this one because, personally, I have not heard of a platform that does something similar like Safely before. It’s ingenious and really important work what you are doing. How did the idea come about?
Lauren Weiniger: I have always wanted a way to easily ask somebody, "Have you been tested and know what your results were?" I also didn’t understand why that was so awkward or inconvenient, and oftentimes, really expensive to get tested.
The most common thing that people say [is], “omigod why hadn’t that existed yet.” The reason is it was really hard to build. The way it works is you can import results or you can get tested. That ‘imported’ part was really the key piece.
HG: So how does it work?
LW: From the consumer perspective, it’s a super simple app. From the platform perspective, it’s an incredibly complex, vertically integrated telemedicine platform. A big piece is you can import medical records from almost anywhere, and that was definitely the hardest part because we had to partner up with the biggest behemoth players in health care, and as you know, health care is not the easiest, most quick-moving bunch. So we partnered with Quest [Diagnostics] and LabCorp, we created this whole platform with this direct proprietary integration into all of these systems. With patient consent, we were able to accomplish this simple task of, “hey I want my data, here you go.”
HG: How quickly can you import medical records?
LW: That varies widely right now. We are getting the time down, it's anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. For about 25 percent it is immediate, for 25 percent to 50 percent it's within that day. That is a big piece we are working on right now, how do we get it faster and faster.
HG: Tell me a little bit about the pricing model.
LW: We wanted to make it as affordable as possible and easy as possible, you really have to hit both sides. We partnered with Quest for that, and we're adding at-home options, too, so people can skip the doctor's visit. We ask all the questions that a doctor does, it's all automated and so there is no judgment there. If they are positive, we have our network of physicians. If they don't have insurance (or they don't want to use it — many of our users are on their parent's health insurance), we want to take away that friction so it's only $99 out of pocket (versus $400).
HG: Safely had quite a start.
LW: The company has been through an interesting trajectory. The initial company started in 2016, but we went through a whole restructure, so July is when we launched Safely. We will go internationally, but probably not until much later next year.
HG: So what’s next for Safely?
LW: We are partnering with dating apps, so we are adding the Safely badge. That badge will never show actual status like your medical results, it'll just say you've been tested recently (for most being in the last six months) and is proven with the Safely app, which shows your actual results. The first one [dating app] is Hud. They have eight million downloads, two million actives, it's a female-forward casual dating app. And then we have five others signed, Grindr is one of them.
HG: You mentioned you were adding COVID-19 testing to your offering, that’s exciting!
LW: COVID testing is being added in two ways, one is in the existing Safely app as an add on to the regular STD test panel. There are two options, there is the antibody test which is through Quest. When you get your STD test you can use the same blood draw and get your COVID antibody test. In addition, there is also the PCR swabs drive throughs that are at Walmart-Quest locations across the country. And we are also re-skinning and doing a separate version of the Safely app that is going to be COVID only that will offer both options as well as at-home very soon. That will be rolled out in six weeks.
We will continue to add as new innovations come to market. And that is the whole goal and model: I am not creating the latest innovation in diagnostics because there are brilliant people that are. But what I want this platform and this app to be is for consumers to be able to easily access those innovations, diagnostics, treatments that are right for them.
Curious about Safely? Download and follow them here.
What a great innovation - how has this not existed already! Also, wonderful newsletter (can't believe it's the first, looks so professional)
LOVE this idea! Esp for pandemic times with COVID, it's almost like an STI already!