Got painful periods? This virtual clinic for period pain is here to help
UK femtech startup Daye is on a mission to help you deal with your period pain. How? By opening what it’s billing as the world’s first-ever virtual period pain clinic.
The newly-launched service, which extends the company’s already popular business selling female health products line—with its signature product being CBD-infused tampons—is aimed at helping women get a faster diagnosis of what’s causing their period pain. It’s also only available to UK users for now.
What’s a virtual period pain clinic?
When it comes to reducing the gender care gap caused by traditional healthcare services (which have a well-documented history of dismissing or under-interrogating issues affecting the non-male population), not much has been done, regardless of how much pain or how many women are suffering because of it.
Menstrual pain is a problem many studies suggest affects up to nine in ten women, hence why Daye spotted an opportunity to further extend the area in which it already specialises.
Commenting on the new launch Valentina Milanova, founder of Daye, explained: “Like so many others, I’ve faced the dismissal of my period pain by medical professionals. My own experiences with ovarian cysts and the resultant pain were dismissed time and again. This led me to accept debilitating period pain as an unchangeable reality of my life.”
But Milanova believes things need to change. “Nobody’s menstrual pain should be dismissed, which is why we launched our period pain clinic to ensure that nobody has to suffer in silence or be in the dark about the cause or management of their menstrual pain.”
Conditions such as endometriosis, adenomyosis, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)—been there, done that—fibroids, and others associated with chronic pelvic pain can have period pain as a symptom. As if that wasn’t enough, some of them may also affect a woman’s fertility. All this to say that there are many reasons for people with periods to want to get to the root of what’s causing their painful menstrual bleeding in the first place.
That’s where Daye comes in, proclaiming faster diagnosis of linked conditions as one of its aims for the new virtual clinic. In collaboration with NHS GPs, gynaecologists and chronic pelvic pain specialists, the service conducts a thorough assessment of a patient’s symptoms and offers private consultations with a range of personally-catered potential solutions.
The experts can also address other connected and largely unmanaged symptoms, including infertility, hair loss, obesity, and severe acne. Patients will also be provided with recommended symptom management tools including prescribed CBD tampons, TENS machines, pelvic floor trainers, acupuncture, and hormonal contraception.
As the NHS continues to struggle to meet demand on a heavily stretched public budget, Daye’s virtual clinic presents women with a faster and more convenient response to issues.
Depending on how much you pay, Daye provides customers with either a partial or full personalised period pain management report. They are also able to discuss the results of their report with either a nurse or a pelvic pain specialist, again depending on which of the products they buy.
To scale individual assessments, the company is using a proprietary (non-learning) algorithm, which it says is “based on national guidelines and medical research for the diagnosis and management of pelvic pain conditions,” that draws on users’ responses to a period pain questionnaire Daye sends them in order to generate their personalised pain management report.
“We use a proprietary non-learning algorithm, which has been reviewed by and validated by clinicians,” Milanova told TechCrunch. “The algorithm has also been tested with real-world people with confirmed diagnoses of pelvic pain conditions. The algorithm is trained on existing clinical guidelines and aims to replicate the experience a patient would receive by highly trained pelvic pain specialists.”
In turn, this report may recommend pharmaceutical (drugs) and non-pharmaceutical (holistic) treatments (like acupuncture for example), with the stated goal of “maximising pain relief and patient wellbeing.”
How much does it cost?
The online clinic works with tiered pricing, starting at £24.99 for what’s called the standard service. This provides the user with a “snapshot” of their personalised report and “primary insights,” but no consultation. This includes an assessment of their current painkiller intake, with a focus on safety.
An advanced version of the service includes the customer’s full report and a 30-minute consultation with a nurse to discuss the results, at a cost of £54.99. While a premium version of the service, priced at £199.99, buys the customer a half-hour consultation with a pelvic pain specialist to talk through the report.
Are there any downsides to a virtual consultation?
As promising as Daye’s new initiative sounds, it’s hard not to wonder whether a virtual clinic can really get to the root of something as potentially tricky to pin down in cause as period pain without undergoing physical tests or even being examined in person.
To this, Milanova retorts that the diagnosis of chronic gynaecological health conditions such as endometriosis and PCOS is “evolving towards a symptom of believing patient symptoms versus using more invasive diagnostic protocols like keyhole surgeries.”
She added: “Our clinic incorporates a clinically-validated questionnaire and symptom matcher that adhere to the guidelines of gynaecological health regulators and organisations such as NICE, ACOG, and RCOG. This ensures that conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, and other chronic pelvic pain disease are accurately assessed.”
