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As a woman in the United States, turning 21 means beginning a lifelong journey of getting a pap smear every three years. It’s not a pleasant experience. You’ll lie down with your legs in stirrups, while your doctor inserts a speculum inside your vagina. Then, she or he will take a sample from your cervix with a hard plastic device to figure out if you have any trace of HPV (the human papillomavirus), a sexually transmitted infection that can cause cervical cancer, or cancerous and precancerous cells. Starting today, however, there’s an easier solution. Teal Health, a woman’s health company founded in 2020, has developed a new product that allows you to take a sample at home and send it to a lab for testing. Today, the device received FDA approval, so it is now possible to order one online. It will be covered by insurance. The company is still working on out-of-pocket pricing, but aims to make the product as affordable and accessible for women as possible. Teal was founded by Kara Egan, a health tech investor, and Avnesh Thakor, an interventional radiologist and Stanford School of Medicine professor. Egan realized that many women were skipping their pap smears. (In 2019, 23% of women were overdue for their cervical cancer screening.) But cervical cancer is the fourth deadliest cancer among women. “It’s just so easy to accidentally skip your appointment,” says Egan. “That’s especially true if you don’t have insurance or don’t have a doctor you see regularly.” Some proportion of women also skip their pap smear because the process itself is so uncomfortable. “It can feel like a very violating experience, but it is also so important,” Egan says. [Photo: Teal Health] How Teal works Working with the design studio Ideo, Egan and Thakor have developed a device that looks a like a tampon and is designed be comfortable to insert with a plastic applicator. Ideo designed the wand so women could use it with one hand while standing up while in the bathroom. A woman will insert the wand into her vagina and use a thumb-operated wheel to deploy a sponge at the tip. Spinning the sponge collects cell samples from the cervix. From there, she can use the wheel to retract the sponge back into the wand to prevent contamination. The sponge pops off the applicator, and is then sent to a lab where it will be tested. Teal is a telemedicine platform. When you buy the wand, you will see a doctor online who will walk you through the process of using the device. If the results come back abnormal, the doctor will walk through the results with you and also talk about the next steps, which likely will involve seeing a doctor and following some sort of treatment plan. Part of what motivated Egan to pursue this device is that cervical cancer can be easily treated with early testing. HPV is a common virus that is commonly spread through sex or skin-to-skin contact. There is now a vaccine that pediatricians give to both girls and boys that reduces the risk of contracting HPV. Most HPV infections don’t lead to cancer. But if even a woman does get infected with HPV, it is relatively easy to clear the infection if it is detected early enough. By taking a sample of cervical cells, we are now able to identify the 14 different kinds of precancerous cells associated with cervical cancer. “If you screen for cervical cancer and catch it early, it is nearly 100% curable,” says Egan. After developing the wand, Teal health has done clinical trials to identify its effectiveness. Then, the company sent the results to the FDA to get approval to start selling the device. That approval came through today. Teal’s wand will be available through the brand’s website. The product will be covered by insurance. But the company also wants to make it available to women who aren’t covered by insurance. It hasn’t established the out-of-pocket cost yet, but Egan promises that the final pricing will be as affordable to as many women as possible. It will also have a donation program, so that some women can get the test for free. “We will find ways for people who don’t have the means to make sure they’re still accessing screening,” she says. “No one needs to get cervical cancer.”
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of a U.S. air traffic control system that it said still relies on floppy disks and replacement parts found on eBay and has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of recent deadly plane crashes and technical failures.The plan calls for six new air traffic control centers, along with an array of technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation’s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.“We use radar from the 1970s,” said Duffy, who compared the proposal with upgrading from a flip phone to a smartphone. “This technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.”How much it will all cost wasn’t immediately revealed. Duffy said he’ll work with Congress on the details.“It’s going to be billions, lots of billions,” he said.The plan has an aggressive timeline, calling on everything to be finished by 2028 although Duffy said it may take another year.Demands to fix the aging system that handles more than 45,000 daily flights have increased since the midair collision in January between an Army helicopter and a commercial airliner that killed 67 people over Washington, D.C.That crashand a string of other crashes and mishapsshowed the immediate need for these upgrades, Duffy said in front of airline officials, union leaders and family members of those who died in the crash near Reagan National Airport.The proposal sets out to add fiber, wireless or satellite technology at more than 4,600 locations, replace 618 radars and more than quadruple the number of airports with systems designed to reduce near misses on runways.Six new air traffic control centers also would be built under the plan, and new hardware and software would be standardized across all air traffic facilities.The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week budgeted $12.5 billion to overhaul the system, but that estimate came out before the Transportation Department revealed its plan. Duffy said the final price tag will be higher.U.S. Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, who heads the House transportation committee, called the amount only a “down payment.”To build the system quickly, as planned, Duffy said Congress must give the Federal Aviation Administration all the money up front and streamline the permitting process.“The system we have here? It’s not worth saving. I don’t need to preserve any of this. It’s too old,” Duffy said.Trump said Thursday that the plan will revolutionize flying. “The new equipment is unbelievable what it does,” he said from the Oval Office. He began to say it may even alleviate the need for pilots before adding, “In my opinion, you always need pilots. But you wouldn’t even have to have pilots.”The newly revealed proposal appears to have wide support across the aviation industry from airline CEOs to the unions representing controllers and pilots but this is just the beginning and many details haven’t been revealed.Duffy quickly said the plan will not involve privatizing the air traffic control system, as Trump had supported in his first term.Following the midair crash near Washington, Trump promised to fix what he called “an old, broken system” and to tackle the nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers while blaming the previous Biden administration for both problems.But the weaknesses within the air traffic control system have been highlighted for years in hearings before Congress and government reports. The struggles to keep up with increasing air traffic has been recognized since the 1990s long before either Trump or Biden took office.The Trump administration’s overhaul plan will need enough funding to be more effective than previous reform efforts during the last three decades. Already more than $14 billion has been invested in upgrades since 2003 but none have dramatically changed how the system works.The FAA has been working since the mid-2000s to make upgrades through its NextGen program.One of the biggest challenges with a massive upgrade is that the FAA must keep the current system operating while developing a new system and then find a way to seamlessly switch over. That’s partly why the agency has pursued more gradual improvements in the past.The shortage of controllers and technical breakdowns came to the forefront in the last two weeks when a radar system briefly failed at the Newark, New Jersey, airport, leading to a wave of flight cancellations and delays.Without the planned upgrades, those breakdowns will be repeated around the nation, Duffy said. “Newark has been a prime example of what happens when this old equipment goes down,” he said. Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington contributed. Josh Funk and John Seewer, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The Federal Emergency Management Agency faced fresh upheaval Thursday just weeks before the start of hurricane season when the acting administrator was pushed out and replaced by another official from the Department of Homeland Security.The abrupt change came the day after Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who held the job for the last few months, testified on Capitol Hill that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle an organization that helps plan for natural disasters and distributes financial assistance.“I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” he said Wednesday.President Donald Trump has suggested that individual states, not the federal government, should take the lead on hurricanes, tornadoes and other crises. He has been sharply critical of FEMA’s performance, particularly in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa, will run FEMA for the time being. He does not appear to have any experience in managing natural disasters. He currently serves as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction.The administration made no statement about any potential permanent nominee. Nor did the White House answer questions about Richardson’s background, the impact of Hamilton’s testimony or whether the president personally ordered his dismissal.An administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Hamilton was offered another government job that would be a better fit for him, but did not say what that job would be.FEMA staff were notified of the change in leadership through a brief email.Through a January executive order, Trump established a review council tasked with “reforming and streamlining the nation’s emergency management and disaster response system,” according to Homeland Security. The 13-member council is chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.During Hamilton’s appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday, he shared concerns about how FEMA assistance is administered. He also said the agency had “evolved into an overextended federal bureaucracy, attempting to manage every type of emergency no matter how minor.”But when Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, asked Hamilton how he felt about plans to eliminate FEMA, Hamilton said he did not believe the agency should be eliminated.“Having said that,” Hamilton continued, “I’m not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination such as consequential as that should be made. That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body.”In a statement Thursday afternoon, DeLauro expressed support for Hamilton and accused the Republican president of firing “anyone who is not blindly loyal to him.”“The Trump administration must explain why he has been removed from this position,” said DeLauro. “Integrity and morality should not cost you your job.” Chris Megerian and Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Associated Press
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