Meet America's Safest Man to Have Sex With
2013.10.28
Ramin Bastani has had at least 50 STD tests done in the last two years. He still hates needles until now. But Bastani isn't getting tested because he's having frequent unprotected sex with strangers. He's doing it for company research.
Bastani is the founder and CEO of Hula, an app that helps users find and rate clinics that test for sexually transmitted diseases. At a Health 2.0 conference earlier this month, he was introduced to the crowd as the "safest man to have sex with in America." The title stuck. "Oh, my girlfriend hates that one," Bastani said.
Hula's story started when Bastani had a night out on the town after his long-term relationship ended. He met a woman whom he brought back to his place. When things escalated, she asked him if he had any STDs. No matter how he answered, it didn't seem to convince her. "She steps away and says, 'You have an STD.' She smacks me across the face, tells me to eff off, and walks out of the room," Bastani recalls. He had a clean bill of health, but he had no easy way of proving it--and the young woman had no way of knowing for sure if he was telling the truth, for that matter. "I sat there thinking there has to be a better way," Bastani says.
His company was formerly known as Qpid.me, and it gained traction in 2010 when changes to HIPAA laws allowed users to sign medical documents electronically on a mobile device or with a mouse. This allowed the app to request documents on behalf of users by faxing clinics which were then obligated to send over patient documents within 15 days.
The encrypted documents can be shared with potential partners, who gesture on the app to unzip others' profiles. Bastani says it's a flirtatius version of the childhood game "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours."
"The incentive is to be tested more often and have more recent dates on profiles because it makes you more attractive on dating profiles and in person," he said. "I think we can reduce most major STDs by 50% in a few years as it's adopted in dating sites."
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