Starting this fall, women will be able to use a simple swab to screen for cervical cancer. The method offers an alternative to a procedure that many dread — and promises to address disparities in who develops the disease.
Now, a handful of health care companies are preparing to introduce a new model for cervical cancer screening and prevention that would circumvent the speculum: self-collection, in which a woman swabs her vagina in the doctor’s office, using only a narrow swab that looks similar to the one used during a Covid test. Once the sample is collected, a lab would test it for the strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, most likely to cause cervical cancer.
Paywall- relevant text.