Discreet access to the “morning-after pill.”
Interview: Noëmi KernAccess to emergency contraception requires an in-person consultation at a pharmacy, which involves answering extremely personal questions. Esther Spinatsch has developed a digital tool to make this experience less stressful.
Key takeaways
- Pharmacy consultations help women choose emergency contraception suited to their individual situation.
- The eviflow web app lets women answer intimate questions privately before the consultation, giving pharmacy staff more time to focus on their needs.
- Developed from university research, eviflow also enables anonymized data analysis to improve understanding of emergency contraception needs.
Esther Spinatsch, who are the women in Switzerland who need emergency hormonal contraception?
Emergency hormonal contraception (or the “morning-after pill”) is dispensed around 100,000 times a year in Switzerland, with the average patient age being around 26. So it’s not like it’s being given mainly to unexperienced or uninformed teenagers. People take it for a variety of reasons. Many will have had unprotected sexual intercourse; in other cases, their contraception may have failed, for example. Knowing the reasons is important for prevention too. Unprotected sex carries a risk not only of unwanted pregnancy, but also of sexually transmitted infections. For me, however, it’s crucial not to stigmatize or reproach women who find themselves in this situation.
How easy is it to access emergency contraception?
In Switzerland, emergency contraception has been available from pharmacies without a prescription for 25 years now. However, you do need to have a consultation first. There are endless discussions on whether this is too much of an obstacle and whether access should be made even easier.
Do you agree?
In principle, I think easy access is very important. I regularly work at a pharmacy in Basel and carry out consultations on emergency contraception. But I don’t think it makes sense to get rid of the consultation stage altogether. Switzerland has various preparations for hormonal emergency contraception. Different options will suit different women depending on the situation, so the aim of the consultation is to support them in choosing the best emergency contraception for their needs. Many women also appreciate the opportunity to talk to a healthcare professional about their situation and to discuss further questions relating to contraception and sexual health.
So why is the consultation still seen as an obstacle?
Finding yourself in need of emergency contraception can be stressful and emotional. One of the greatest concerns among women is lack of discretion, but if the healthcare professionals are going to advise them properly, they need extremely personal information.
When did the unprotected sex occur? When was the woman’s last period? Is she taking any medication or breastfeeding? These details help to assess the likelihood of pregnancy and identify the most suitable emergency contraception.
You’ve developed a digital tool that aims to simplify consultations. How did you come up with this idea?
This is a project very close to my heart. I see a real need to better support women in this situation while enabling pharmacists to provide high-quality advice. Alongside my practical work, I also understand emergency contraception from an academic perspective. Around 10 years ago, I analyzed the records from consultation sessions as part of a research project on emergency contraception in Switzerland. They were written on paper, and often still are today. That prompted the idea for a digital solution.
How did you turn the idea into a practical tool?
We had an initial version of the tool in 2019. Later, the technology was completely overhauled. The app was piloted in 10 pharmacies in everyday practice for a good two years as part of a university research project. In 2025, we founded the startup Qualitheke GmbH as a spinoff from the university, and the web app eviflowhas been available since August.
How does eviflow work?
The customer can enter key information digitally by herself before the in-person consultation and specify whether she’d like further information on topics such as how emergency contraception works or different methods of contraception.
This allows her to answer intimate questions discretely and in her own time. It also improves privacy. The tool aims to minimize obstacles for women while facilitating good professional advice.
What does this mean specifically?
This information provides pharmacy staff with a structured basis for their consultation with the customer. If the healthcare professional already has the most important information, they can focus more on the individual’s situation and needs during the session. The latest expert recommendations can also be recorded in the app to help the consultant make their assessment and provide additional assurance. This can also be helpful for smaller pharmacies that don’t do these consultations very often.
What happens to the data entered via eviflow?
Eviflow doesn’t record names or dates of birth. Anonymized data can be scientifically analyzed as part of research projects. This allows us, for example, to find out more about the situations in which women require emergency contraception or where advice is required. I see this as closing a circle: From research, we developed a practical tool, and practical experiences will, in turn, lead to new research questions and greater understanding.
More articles in this issue of UNI NOVA (November 2026).