HLTH Forward Podcast
HLTH (Health) Forward is where we hold space for Healthcare leaders, physicians, and key health policymakers to discuss what takes us to move Healthcare Forward. We want to hear challenges, ideas, and out-of-the-box solutions for us to unite our ecosystems further and move the needle towards an innovative, affordable, and all-inclusive healthcare ecosystem.
* Not affiliated with HLTH events
HLTH Forward Podcast
The Wand Reimagining Cervical Cancer Screening: Kara Egan, CEO and Founder @Teal Health
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Every time a friend mentions her annual checkup, the conversation sounds less like healthcare and more like a horror story. Stirrups. A speculum. A procedure that hasn't meaningfully changed in 150 years — a tool designed before women could vote, still showing up in exam rooms like it owns the place.
So when I sat down with Kara Egan, CEO and co-founder of Teal Health, I came in with real questions.
Here's the number that stopped me cold: 4,200 women die from cervical cancer every year in the United States. Not because we lack the science. We have the vaccine. We have decades of research. And yet 1 in 3 women are behind on their screenings — and it's getting worse.
The barriers aren't medical. They're logistical.
Kara didn't set out to build a medical device company. She came up through health tech investing, had a baby, and realized it was genuinely easier to order a coffee than schedule a doctor's appointment. She met her co-founder, who had built the first prototype of the Teal Wand at Stanford Biodesign. Covid hit. Telehealth exploded. She saw the opening.
What Teal built is an at-home HPV self-collection kit — a small wand, used privately, on your own schedule. Mail the sample. Get your results. No stirrups. No six-month wait.
FDA authorized in May 2025. Nationwide by January 2026.
Nearly half of Teal's customers were behind on screenings. Almost 20% had never been screened at all — not because they didn't care, but because the system was never designed for them.
And starting January 1st, 2027, federal guidelines require it to be covered with zero cost-sharing for anyone with insurance. No copay. No deductible. Effectively free.
Mark it.
About
Kara Egan is the CEO and co-founder of Teal Health, the company behind the first FDA-authorized at-home cervical cancer screening kit in the United States. Named to TIME's Best Inventions of 2025, she has spent her career at the intersection of healthcare and technology — as a health tech investor, software investor, and operator at companies like Zendesk. A Stanford and Wharton alumna, Kara co-founded Teal in 2020 after recognizing that women's healthcare was long overdue for a redesign. In May 2025, the FDA authorized the Teal Wand, and by January 2026, it was available in all 50 states. She is on a mission to eliminate cervical cancer — a disease that is almost entirely preventable — by making screening accessible to every woman, everywhere.
