Roman moves beyond ED to oral and genital herpes, smoking cessation and more

Two years ago, I was prescribed medication for my heart. The primary side effect was erectile dysfunction. Unfortunately, this wasn’t new. I had taken the same medication 9 years prior, just after my heart procedure. Nearly a decade had passed but I knew I would be faced with the same challenge. I heard the doctor say the name of the medication and everything after that was a dull drone.

My life changed and I knew precisely how. My partner and I had been together for 5 years. I wasn’t a kid this time and “the problem” was going to take a team effort. This felt very different.

I should have been listening to my doctor. We were talking about my heart after all. But my mind was elsewhere.

Then, on the walk home from the doctor’s office, my dad (who is also a physician and was there for the results of my test) looked at me and said a few simple words: “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.” He knew what I was worried about. He had seen over thirty thousand patients over the course of his career and knew just what to say. He had helped me overcome this challenge once before. It worked. Once I trusted that my daily life would be okay, I was put at ease. I was actually able to start thinking about my heart.

When the present was no longer a concern, I could finally focus on the future.

That seems fairly obvious. But, somewhere, somehow, it has been lost in healthcare. If someone is 30 lbs overweight and is experiencing erectile dysfunction, a physician sees diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure or high cholesterol — and it’s completely understandable. They are worried about their patient’s future. But, a patient cannot see tomorrow if something is consuming them today. If they cannot be intimate with their partner, they aren’t going to be able to be concerned about some blood pressure number that is 18 points too high. This idea is one of the key insights on which Ro was founded.

At Ro, we meet patients at eye level. We help solve what matters most to our members in the present so they can focus on their future.

Today, we’re excited to announce 4 new treatments under Roman: genital herpes, oral herpes, premature ejaculation, and hair loss.

Why these 4?

It’s simple: our members have asked us for help overcoming these health conditions. And if a patient asks a doctor for help, the next steps should be obvious.

We’re fortunate to have some of the world’s leading experts assisting in our effort to make affordable, convenient, and high-quality care accessible to anyone in the world. Our advisory board includes a U.S. Surgeon General, a former head of the DEA, an NIH director, Chiefs of Departments at Cornell, and Directors at NYU.

And these aren’t just faces on a corporate website. Ro’s expert advisors are assisting in developing physician protocols and patient treatment plans. The treatment plan for genital herpes was written by a Ro medical board member (aka my dad 😊) who led a landmark study proving Valtrex (Valacyclovir) could be used to suppress genital herpes. Valtrex proved to be the first oral medication to ever prevent the transmission of a virus and he helped to advance that effort when many doubted it could be done.

For many of these conditions, people are under the impression that there is no treatment available and that it is “just the way they are built.” Other people are aware but too embarrassed to seek out help. More importantly, each of these conditions has the potential to overwhelm someone in the present, to dominate their day to day, and prevent them from thinking about their long-term health.

At first glance, some might laugh — they did at erectile dysfunction. But if you’re experiencing one of these conditions, you’re not laughing. If you’re worried about a genital herpes outbreak and transmitting it to your partner, Ro will be here. If you’re unable to be intimate with your partner for more than a few seconds, Ro will be here. If you’re concerned over the loss of your hair and want to keep it (or if you want to shave it off completely), Ro will be here.

If medication isn’t the right thing for you, Ro will still be here.

Why 4 conditions at once, why not just 1?

While it might have looked like we were building a DTC ED company, we were building the core infrastructure to treat not just one, but hundreds of conditions via telemedicine.

We spent the last 18 months building the foundation: our own custom physician EMR to establish patient-physician relationships digitally, our own pharmacy network, and our own pharmacy operating system. We built the ability to dynamically guide patients through tens of thousands of unique visits, titrate doses based on patient feedback, automate quantity changes based on physician recommendations, automate follow-ups, facilitate blood tests and integrate third party health records to complement self-reported data.

We’re flexing the muscles of our full-stack infrastructure and we’re just getting started!