Oli Lipski
From tomorrow, you can sign up to a beta version of BedPost, an app designed to make managing your sexual health a whole lot easier.
Once you input data about your sex life, it assesses the likelihood of STI transmission. From there it provides you with a testing schedule and safe-sex tips tailored to you and your behaviours.
The launch comes at a time when the sexual health system is hampered by budget cuts – and STIs are on the rise. Clinics have closed down across the UK, but with technological solutions coming to the fore, there’s some hope that the shortfall in government support can be made up by reaching people via their phones, and in their homes via test kits ordered online.
Last November SafeMatch App launched with the aim of making dating safer by offering you the chance to share and request verified sexual health results with prospective sexual partners. Users can manage their past STD results and share them via the app.
Unfortunately, there’s a significant scare factor when considering personal information shared – especially considering the regular issue with dating apps leaking and selling data. Grindr, for example, sold its users’ HIV status to third-parties in 2018.
SafeMatch claims its “security standards meet or exceed the standards used in healthcare setting. Each critical user information (including name and DOB) is encrypted with a unique security key”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eUzb6RltaM&feature=emb_title
Founder of SafeMatch, Rahul Gupta, told SEXTECHGUIDE that the company has made several improvements on “security, content and herpes status sharing.”
The difference with BedPost is the ability to manage your own sexual health, without relying on others to do the same – sharing data is not required, and thus less of an issue. Nevertheless, SEXTECHGUIDE is waiting on a response about BedPost’s data privacy plan, and how the initial transmission likelihood analysis is performed.
Of course, none of this is going to be a replacement to a sexual health clinic – indeed, if the app does its job, you’ll be going more regularly.
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