How Planned Parenthood is using technology to treat patients

Planned Parenthood is no longer just a brick-and-mortar organization. It’s been expanding its tools for patients to access its services remotely, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California Thursday.

“For 100 years, we have been a brick-and-mortar health care delivery system,” she said. “And with great partnerships from a lot of folks in the tech world, we have increased our ability to serve people in other ways without having to walk into a health center.”

The reproductive and sexual health organization offers:

• Consultations by text message
• Video call visits
• A period-tracking app

When you combine that into one example of what’s possible, you might get this anecdote that she shared:

“One of our first online birth control patients lived on a glacier in the Arctic Circle,” she said, “and so we were able to do a video conference with a clinician in Seattle and a float plane dropped her birth control five days later.”

Richards said birth control by drone is a possibility down the line: “Drones dropping birth control — I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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