Meet Biem: Your App-Based Sexual Health Clinic

July 25, 2017

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Online STI service offers testing, anonymity, and video chats with real doctors.

Ignorance, one of the greatest impediments to having a healthy, and therefore happy, sex life may be on the way out, thanks to a new app called Biem.

Anonymous STI testing

For many people, talking about sexuality with their physician is simply too uncomfortable. So they often suffer from shame as well as ignorance. But with Biem, they can now communicate and get tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) with complete anonymity.

Biem founder and CEO Bryan Stacy was inspired to create the app after being diagnosed with testicular cancer and chlamydia. He told Out: “I realized that the worst part of the entire experience was the two-month period before I was diagnosed—the time during which I felt something was wrong, but rationalized it away.”

At first he was unwilling to seek a professional consultation. “I knew I had to eliminate the barriers that keep people in this damaging loop.”

Beginning with a video chat

To use Biem, users must first download the app, which is free on both iOS and Android. Then they engage in a video consultation with one of Biem’s physicians.

This initial doctor chat costs $45, which Biem points out is often the cost of a co-payment. Afterward, the user has the option to either go to a nearby lab or have STI testing materials mailed directly to them for an additional $45.

Biem tests for a range of STIs, including HIV, herpes, hepatitis C and A, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. Without insurance, a full range of tests cost approximately $400. For only chlamydia, syphilis, herpes, chlamydia, and HIV, it is $200.

Then comes the results the knowledge

After the testing process, the results are confidentially sent to the user’s smartphone (and their partner, if they wish), via a unique code.

Stacy put it well, saying that Biem uses the Internet’s power of anonymity to help people overcome sexual ignorance. This could be an important step toward eliminating “the awkwardness, shame, and inconvenience that prevents people from getting tested and talking to their sexual partners about health and STDs.”

Image source: Biem

M. Christian

M.Christian (they/them) loves nothing better than exploring the intersections of sex and technology—and speculating on the future of both. A highly regarded erotica writer they have six novels,12 collections, 100+ short stories, and 25 anthologies as an editor to their name. Their non-fiction regularly appears in many sites, but they're most proud of being a regular contributor to Future of Sex.

Of their erotic fiction, Tristan Taormino said that “M.Christian is a literary stylist of the highest caliber: smart, funny, frightening, sexy—there's nothing [they] can't write about… and brilliantly.”

Reflecting their unique ability to sympathetically and convincingly write for a range of genders and sexual orientations, their stories have appeared in multiple editions of Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica, and others. Their collection of gay erotic fiction, Dirty Words, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

While a majority of their stories have been collected into books like Dirty Words, their fondness for combining sex and science fiction is clearly evident in collections that include Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, Skin Effect Effect, Bachelor Machine, and Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica of M.Christian.

As a novelist, M.Christian’s versatility is on full display with Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes, Painted Doll; and the somewhat controversial queer BDSM/horror/thrillers Finger's Breadth, and Me2.

M.Christian has worked on the industry’s production side as an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books and as a Publisher for Digital Parchment Services. The latter dedicated to celebrating the works of science-fiction legends such as William Rotsler, Jerome Bixby, Jody Scott, Arthur Byron Cover, Ernest Hogan, and James Van Hise.

Covering topics like BDSM safety, sexual education, senior sexuality concerns, queer and gender issues, plus reviewing a variety of sex tech products, M.Christian’s non-fiction has appeared on sites like Kinkly, Tickle.Life, Sexpert, Queer Majority, Sex for Every Body, and—of course—their ongoing work for Future of Sex.

If there’s anything M.Christian enjoys more than writing, it’s teaching. A featured presenter, sometimes with their friend Ralph Greco Jr, at national sex and BDSM events, they have lectured on kink play (with an emphasis on safety), polyamory, boosting sexual creativity, and erotica writing--for beginners or those wanting to go pro.

M.Christian is a cohost on two popular sex-education podcasts: Love’s Outer Limits with Dr. Amy Marsh and Licking Non-Vanilla with Ralph Greco, Jr.