This year, a revolution in the unpleasant pap smear test will arrive on the American market in the form of the first at-home cervical cancer screening device ever approved by the FDA.

Offering the chance to perform a vaginal swab test in the comfort of one’s own home, the Teal Wand is covered by several major insurers such as Anthem and Cigna.

The package includes the wand and swab along with everything needed to store the sample and send it off to Teal Health’s laboratory where a test for the HPV virus is conducted. Receiving the results over a smartphone, it’s the first major change in the pap smear for 80+ years according to the company.

HPV accounts for almost all cases of cervical cancer in America, which while falling gradually year over year for decades, is on the rise among rural and low-income populations. An at-home test is ideal for both, and may help prevent some of the 4,000 deaths from the disease predicted to occur this year.

There are a variety of prevention and treatment options for addressing cervical cancer. Abnormal cells spotted in a pap smear test can be removed before they become cancerous. There’s also the HPV vaccine Gradasil-9 which protects against 9 known forms of the virus.

But between attempting to take off work and finding someone to look after children, cervical cancer screenings are not uncommonly delayed long past the point at which they would become the most useful.

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“I think it’s very exciting,” Barbara Goff, a gynecologic oncologist at Fred Hutch Cancer Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, told Science News. “It expands cervical cancer screening to more women, which is good. And it makes [screening] more comfortable, which is also good.”

Interested parties can join the waitlist and learn more, especially regarding insurance coverage, on the Teal Health website.

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