From Pap smears and UTI tests to tracking fertility, a growing band of DIY health care startups want to save you the trouble of seeing a doctor. But is that good?

In 2009, 25-year-old industrial designer Jessica Ching received a letter from her doctor asking her to get a Pap smear. Though she was reluctant — the test is notoriously uncomfortable — the Toronto native got one. She also learned that 33 percent of Canadian women don’t, leaving many at risk for cervical cancer. That was 33 percent too many for Ching, in a country where four women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every day. Her solution was Eve Medical, launched in mid-2017, a mail-in swab kit that empowers women to take Pap smears at home. Problem solved.

Eve Medical is part of a growing number of startups developing do-it-yourself home health products and services, tapping into a fast-growing demand. Traditionally viewed as peculiar — even dangerous — DIY home health care is finding increasing traction as people recognize the benefits of being able to address their health needs on their own time, without needing a doctor at every step.

Maxwell Anikwenwa, archbishop emeritus of the Church of Nigeria, holds outsize sway in the country’s southeast.

In place of armed security at the Commissioners Quarters in Awka, Nigeria, a gray-haired choirmaster sings as you make your way from the gate. The sun emerges from behind a neon-yellow cloud to greet the fluttering greeneries of short hibiscus flowers, emergent neem trees and tile floor of a caramel-colored semidetached house. Here lives Archbishop Emeritus Maxwell Anikwenwa, aka the door to political power in southeastern Nigeria.

“If they say that I am influential, I am influential because I speak my mind,” Anikwenwa says. “I don’t talk from both sides of the mouth. I am after the truth. I don’t fear; I don’t owe anybody the privileges of lies.”

As Nigeria prepares for February’s presidential election, Anikwenwa is among the critical Ibo ethnic group leaders who have shifted support away from President Muhammadu Buhari to challenger Atiku Abubakar, as Buhari struggles to live up to the high expectations that greeted his 2015 victory. The question of whether Africa’s most populous nation turns back to the political party that has dominated this century could fall to influential men like Anikwenwa who rouse religious fervor.

Europe’s Once app gives you just one match per day, promising more meaningful connections. But will it take off in the U.S.?

When Jean Meyer returned to Paris after traveling abroad for several years, he was surprised to find so many of his friends still single. The fact that his smart, attractive female friends in their 30s didn’t have partners was particularly confusing. “My first reaction was, why wouldn’t they try a dating app?” Meyer says. He quickly learned they had tried them all and were fed up. Most users on Match and eHarmony were much older and in a different life stage, they said, while Tinder was about hooking up and one-night stands. There was nothing in between. 

“Why isn’t there a better dating app for people in their 30s?” Meyer wondered. So, he decided to create one. And with a unique twist — one that’s taking off in Europe, and maybe soon in the U.S. You heard it here first.

In 2014, Meyer founded Once, the “slow dating” app. Once gives you just one match per day, every day at noon. If you’re both interested in each other, great. If not, you’ll get another match tomorrow. The important thing: The ability to incessantly swipe is gone. On average, millennials spend up to 10 hours a week on dating apps, according to a survey by U.K. dating platform Badoo. Meyer wanted to give them some of their time back.