Pandia Health has women covered every day
We had a fascinating and informative conversation with Dr. Sophia Yen, CEO and CoFounder of Pandia Health, who is a passionate evangelist for helping women in their health and reproductive needs.
As a Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford and adolescent specialist, Sophia found a stat that inspired her to start Pandia Health. While prepping for a talk about birth control, she found that the reason most women don’t take their scheduled pill, is that they don’t have it readily on hand. This felt like an easily solvable problem for Sophia so she decided to leverage her entrepreneurial spirit to find a solution.
She wanted to found a company that had women covered every single day for prescription birth control needs, and to achieve this she turned to the telemedicine model, meaning that a woman can now get a prescription in a way that’s convenient, confidential and reliable online.
The Affordable Care Act created a perfect opportunity for Sophia to deliver a service to women to self screen themselves by answering the same 20 questions to identify potential risk. The pharmacists can then prescribe according to the protocol with no need for an in person visit, which means more access for women that live a distance away from their doctors. The service is currently available in California with plans to expand nationally soon. The other basic need to fulfill the prescription is to have blood pressure taken in the last year, Sophia also suggests a visit to your local fire-station where you can get your blood pressure taken if you haven’t gotten it in the last year. A reason to visit the local fire station? We say yes!
As founder and CEO, Sophia is really about breaking down barriers and hangups we have as a society when it comes to speaking about taboo topics like birth control, even though 80% of women at some point in their lives will have a need.
For Sophia, entrepreneurship runs in her blood. Her parents have a Silicon Valley story rags to riches story and imparted upon Sophia a sense of corporate responsibility and experience. This made launching her own startup a natural culmination of her career and desire to impact women positively. Pandia Health intends to be a trusted brand for women that can follow them through multiple life phases whether that’s into family and prenatal, menopause or other low risk medications that can be handled via telemedicine. Pandia Health is backed by Stanford StartX Accelerator and is unique because it’s the only end to end solution with its own pharmacy.
The benefits to going on the pill for women are multiple, but the one that really stood out is the fact that it reduces a woman's chance of cancer. Sophia explained that for women, periods are optional and the continuous shedding of the endometrium or inside lining of the uterus can create undue stress on the uterus, which can lead to cancer.
Periods are in fact optional and women can choose to turn them off at will. She stresses it is perfectly safe to do so. The natural state of female animal is to be pregnant, in certain places in the world women only have 100 periods in their lifetime vs western culture which is three times that.
Pandia Health’s vision is to become a woman’s bestie, her trusted advisor and ultimately to deliver a monthly subscription box, which will include not only her necessary birth control items but also other consumer company samples such as new coffee, make up or even chocolate.
Have a listen to Sophia Yen of Pandia Health here.
Pandia Health is offering a discount to any of our users that sign up for the service, simply sign up here and use the discount code "poppingthebubbl"
