One in seven couples have trouble conceiving, according to the Mayo Clinic. Although doctors tend to focus on potential causes of infertility within women, up to 50 percent of those cases can be traced back to male infertility, according to the clinic.
Posterity Health, a digital male fertility startup based in the Denver Tech Center, aims to put couples on the fastest track to pregnancy by addressing the male side of the equation.
The company was co-founded by CEO Pam Pure and her husband Barrett Cowan, the company’s chief medical officer.
Cowan is a reproductive urologist who specializes in fertility issues. Of the more than 13,000 urologists in the U.S., less than 200 are reproductive urologists, according to Posterity Health.
Posterity Health’s digital platform extends that specialized care to patients in 26 states, including areas that don’t have a reproductive urologist, such as Boulder County, the Western Slope and throughout the Rocky Mountains, Cowan said.
Conversations about infertility have traditionally focused on females, Cowan said, leaving male infertility largely ignored. He recently counseled a couple that found out — after 15 months of trying to get pregnant and eight months of medical tests — the husband was on a medication that reduced sperm production.
Because male fertility is not talked about, Cowan said male patients are sometimes sensitive about the subject.
“We have really tried to reduce that stigma,” he said. “It’s not an issue of masculinity or virility. It’s a medical issue. We have found that, in those people with significant abnormalities, about 70 percent of the time we can identify a cause and improve the situation.”
Launching the Company
Posterity Health was founded in March of 2021 after Cowan noticed that his telehealth conversations with patients were much more productive because patients were in the comfort of their own homes and brought their partners into the discussion.
Meanwhile, Pure, an experienced healthtech executive, was working with health companies to transition to digital health platforms.
These experiences led Pure and Cowan to form Posterity Health. The startup’s platform educates couples about male infertility, provides telehealth appointments and offers at-home semen testing. Colorado patients are also able to meet in-person with Posterity Health physicians.
If a semen test comes back normal, the doctor may provide some advice about lifestyle factors, such as drinking, smoking or marijuana use, that may be reduce sperm quality. If the semen test comes back abnormal, the provider may order additional testing, follow-up telehealth visits and a treatment plan.
Posterity Health works directly with OB-GYNs, fertility centers and fertility benefit managers to provide a holistic approach to treating infertility.
The company also provides sperm preservation, recurrent pregnancy loss consults, vasectomy reversals and gender-affirming care, according to a news release.
Pure said male fertility services are often not covered by health insurance plans and that she has worked with several fertility benefit managers and commercial insurance companies to get male fertility services reimbursed.
Funding News
Posterity Health announced this week that it has raised a $6 million seed series investment. Pure said the funding will be used to hire more healthcare providers, advance its technology roadmap and expand to another 10 states within the next year.
Future technological advances could include features that educate patients about surgical procedures. The platform may also provide information about hormone and medication therapies, as well as ways to manage those prescriptions online.
The funding round was led by Distributed Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, with additional participation from digital healthcare executives such as Merative CEO Gerry McCarthy; Laurie McGraw, former senior vice president of health solutions at the American Medical Association; and Don Holzworth, who chairs the advisory board at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
The company’s care protocols are developed in conjunction with an advisory board that includes male fertility specialists such as Dr. Peter Schlegel and James J. Colt, professor of urology, from Weill Cornell Medicine; Dr. James Smith, the director of the male reproductive health center at the University of California–San Francisco; and Dr. Stan Honig, the director of men’s health at Yale University.
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