Wisp, a women’s telehealth provider, is acquiring sexual health provider TBD Health.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. This is Wisp’s first acquisition and major expansion into enterprise and hybrid care models. The TBD brand will eventually transition to Wisp.
TBD is a national hybrid sexual health and diagnostics platform, combining routine STI and HIV testing with virtual clinical support and in-person services through partnerships. It has tens of thousands of individuals on its platform. The companies hope to further expand access to sexual health, particularly in women, who are underserved when it comes to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access.
“We found their capabilities and expertise really impressive when we thought about how do we accelerate our own B2B strategy,” Monica Cepak, CEO of Wisp, told Fierce Healthcare in an advance interview.
PrEP utilization, which reduces the risk of contracting HIV through sex by 99%, is riddled with disparities in the U.S. From 2019 to 2022, 94% of white people who could benefit from PrEP were prescribed it, while only 13% of Black and 24% of Latino people were. And, though women account for a fifth of new HIV diagnoses, they are greatly underrepresented in PrEP uptake use.
“We think that we are uniquely positioned as a brand to educate and bring awareness … and ultimately bring telePrEP at scale across the country,” Cepak said of TBD’s virtual prescribing capabilities. Wisp has not offered telePrEP to date.
The two companies have worked together before, with Wisp as a B2B customer of TBD. With the acquisition, Cepak is excited to enter the hybrid care space because that is where she said the industry is headed.
“The companies who will be here for the long term are the ones that are figuring that out and moving in that direction. There’s already so much fragmentation for patients that they have to navigate,” Cepak said.
“Care should be delivered in so many different sites,” echoed Daphne Chen, co-founder of TBD Health, in an advance interview. “Being able to offer them those options is actually really core to being able to increase access.”
Also announced Tuesday was TBD’s first hospital partner, Mount Sinai, with more health systems expected to be added this year. TBD sees health systems as “core partners” by serving as their extension with virtual care services and referring patients to hospitals as needed. The idea is to relieve pressure on hospitals and reserve their utilization for truly high-acuity needs.
“We’re able to leverage the digital resources to be able to connect patients with care for low-acuity needs online, and then be able to send them to hospital systems for other services or broader care,” Chen said.
Whereas in the earlier stages of the company, TBD operated several brick-and-mortar clinics, it transitioned to offering in-person care through institutional partners instead. It also works with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Planned Parenthood Direct. Cepak hopes for the company to partner with standalone clinics, too, in the future.
Neither company takes insurance.
TBD is mindful when integrating into hospital workflows, prioritizing co-creating the experience with the system. “The last thing we want to do is create further burden for the clinical teams, because that’s just a recipe for disaster,” Chen said. “We don’t come in with a pre-assumed understanding of how it should work.” TBD has its own in-house EHR and is currently in the process of integrating with Cerner and Epic.
Wisp plans to pursue other strategic M&A opportunities in the future. The platform has served 1.8 million patients to date.
