Enter Dandi, a new company focused on transforming the fertility experience by providing women with the additional support they so desperately need.
Launching today, Dandi offers products and services designed to complement the care fertility patients receive in-clinic. On the product side, the company has created the IVF Care Kit, which includes a suite of products designed to ease the process of self-administering IVF injections. On the services side, Dandi is offering live 1:1 support from fertility nurses to help patients through the injection process in real time, as well as 1:1 expert fertility consultations for women in any stage of their family planning journey.
The Dandi story: A personal mission
Dandi is the brainchild of Chief Clinical Officer Leyla Bilali, RN, and CEO Jake Kent. Bilali, a fertility nurse, first identified the need Dandi would eventually seek to fulfill while working at one of New York Cityโs top fertility clinics. Such clinics do their best, she says, but patient volume is so highโsheโd see up to 80 patients a dayโthat itโs impossible for nurses to offer the kind of support people need during treatment.
Part of the problem, says Kent, is that the involvement of private equity in the fertility space has transformed clinics from strictly medical spaces into business ventures focused on profitability. As a result, patient volume has increased, leading to less personalized care. โAnd this trend is not slowing down,โ he says. This ever-widening gap inspired Bilali to open her own fertility concierge business in 2017, Fertility Together, which offered services such as fertility consultations and 1:1 help with IVF medication administration.
Through one of her clients, Bilali then met Kentโwho previously ran WeLive for WeWorkโbut who had since begun working on products designed to help people through the painful process of IVF injections. Heโd become engaged in these efforts after witnessing a family member endure the challenges of fertility treatments. โShe was already physically, mentally, and emotionally distressed, and on top of that she was totally freaked out by starting the injections,โ he says. โI was blown away by what the struggle looked like behind closed doorsโso much so that I thought she had to be an outlier.โ
When Kent began reaching out to friends, peers, and coworkers who were also going through fertility treatments, he quickly realized his family member’s experience was, in fact, the norm. โI spent nearly a full year listening and getting educated on what the key pain points were,โ he says. โUltimately, what I heard was that the IVF injection protocols were far and away the most distressing part of the experience.โ
He subsequently became passionate about developing physical products that could ease this major pain point. โThen I met up with Leyla and fell in love with everything she was doing from a care perspective,โ he says. โTogether we found this beautiful intersection between physical products designed to help women feel like there was something purpose-built for this experience and virtual care that can support patients through every step of the journey.โ
Dandi’s core offerings
- The IVF Care Kit: Intended to make the process of fertility injections easier and more comfortable, this kit includes a compression belt designed to help guide the injection process, a cooling pad insert designed to help numb the injection site, a heating pad insert designed to provide hands-free heat so as to soothe the site of the injection or ease cramping, a massage ball designed specifically to help with tender spots and progesterone knots, and shot targets, which can help the injector easily identify the desired injection site. The kit costs $185.
- Live injection support: Dandi offers real-time virtual care from fertility nurses that can help with any stage of the injection process, from unboxing your meds (and learning which needles and syringes go with which drugs) to administering the shots. Each session costs $125.
- Fertility consultations: These consultations are meant to complementโbut not replaceโfertility clinic care at any stage of a womanโs fertility journey. This includes women who have not yet visited a fertility clinic but are starting to think about fertility preservation, people looking for a referral to a fertility clinic, and women who are in the process of freezing their eggs or undergoing IUI or IVF and just need more support than their fertility clinic can offer. Each session costs $135.
- Community: Dandi also includes a community element, which has been in beta testing on WhatsApp prior to launch and is moderated by Bilali and her nurses. โI think itโs beautiful when people who have been through fertility treatments want to pay it forward [with advice], but the issue becomes when itโs no longer medically sound,โ she says. โIt gets tricky on medical forums, and thatโs why we wanted to foster a community group thatโs peer-to-peer, but also includes fertility-trained nurses making sure everything is medically credible.โ
Overall, Dandi’s mission is to support people through the fertility treatment phases of family planning, and on ultimately de-stigmatizing fertility treatments and the struggles associated with them by bringing the category out of the shadows.
โWeโve heard from so many patients saying, โThis is already the hardest thing Iโm ever going to have to go throughโwhy does it also have to be so isolating? I feel like thereโs nothing out there that recognizes the struggle Iโm going throughโ,โ says Kent. โI can’t think of any experience where a safe space to feel seen and heard is more greatly needed, and we hope to have created that space.โ
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