Santa Clara resident Ilyssa Russ was in New Jersey when she realized she was out of birth control pills. Her primary care doctor required an appointment to refill her prescription. She stumbled across an article about Nurx, a startup that wants to streamline getting contraception. She entered her health history on its website and sent in photos of her insurance card. The next morning, she had an e-mail from a doctor asking more questions. When she returned to California two days later, a three-month supply of pills was on her doorstep.

“These people are really allies for women,” said Russ, who lectures on English literature and feminist theory at San Jose State University. “Women should be able to take control over their reproductive health. Buying birth control should be as simple as buying condoms or cough medicine or anything else.”

At a time when users can summon a meal, a massage or marijuana through a smartphone app, Nurx and fellow San Francisco startup Lemonaid Health, as well as a few other companies, are working to make getting hormonal birth control as easy as requesting an Uber ride. It’s an evolution of telemedicine to simplify access to some standard prescription drugs, a system designed to appeal to younger people already accustomed to on-demand gratification.

Both also reflect a movement to let women control their own health. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that oral contraceptives be sold over the counter. In March, California will become the second state (after Oregon) to allow pharmacists to dispense birth control without a prescription, but because that will require in-person visits, the online platforms may be faster.

Lemonaid also offers online access to prescriptions for acne, acid reflux, erectile dysfunction, flu, hair loss, sinus infections and urinary tract infections.

‘Convenient solutions’

“These companies are building consumer-first brands, riding a wave of Millennials that don’t have primary care relationships and that are seeking affordable, convenient solutions to their health care complaints — not an interaction with their insurance company,” e-mailed Malay Gandhi, former CEO of Rock Health, an investor in digital-health startups which is not involved with either company.

Both Nurx and Lemonaid work without an in-person doctor’s visit. Users fill out medical questionnaires online to get a doctor’s prescription for the pill, the patch or the ring. Nurx then delivers the birth control within 48 hours at no cost for people who have insurance. Lemonaid sends the prescription to a user-selected pharmacy and charges $15 for the online consultation.

The two vary in several ways.

•Nurx co-founder Edvard Engesæth, a doctor in his native Norway, got a spurt of phone calls every Friday afternoon from female friends whose birth control was about to run out, asking him to rush prescriptions to a pharmacy.

“We felt that was somewhere where we could make a big impact,” said co-founder and CEO Hans Gangeskar, an attorney and computer engineer. “We want to radically simplify (getting birth control); integrate it ... from prescription to drug delivery so it’s a closed loop and users only need one point of contact.”

Nurx began its service in December and is available in California and New York, with four medical doctors providing online consultations on a freelance basis. It also prescribes morning-after pills, both Plan B and Ella. (While Plan B is available over the counter, getting it with a prescription means insurance will cover the cost.) Within a month, it will add prescriptions for HIV-prevention regimens.

Insurers billed

Nurx has an unspecified amount of angel backing and will seek more funding as it graduates from the Y Combinator accelerator program this spring. It makes money by billing insurers for the online visits ($30 to $50) and through marketing fees from partner pharmacies. Patients with insurance have no out-of-pocket cost. For those who lack insurance, it doesn’t charge for prescribing birth control and can send them to pharmacies where a month’s supply is about $14.

•Lemonaid Health started a couple of years ago; its five co-founders include three doctors. Among the founders are Ian Van Every and his brother Dr. Thom Van Every, who co-founded DrThom, which became the biggest telehealth company in the United Kingdom. It raised $5 million from angel investors on top of $2 million from the founders. It operates in California, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

“We want to make safe, effective health care accessible to people at an affordable price to augment the system,” said Brendan Levy, who left a job as a family medicine physician at Georgetown University Hospital to be one of five Lemonaid doctors. He finds that his online patients often are more candid than those he saw in person.

“This technology is part of a spectrum of care of reaching people when and where they need it, making it accessible to people who can’t afford to take time off work to visit a doctor,” he said. Ultimately, having quick online checkups for routine conditions can free up more time for patients who really need it, he said.

Starting point

Lemonaid’s roster of medications “have a solid base of evidence about who are appropriate people to treat,” Levy said. They’re a starting point for other conditions that might be addressed in online consultations, including smoking cessation, headaches and back pain. It plans to add the morning-after pill and HIV prevention medication soon. In partnership with chains like Quest Diagnostics, it can offer lab tests for conditions such as sexually transmitted diseases and hepatitis C.

Kackie Cohen, an IT project manager in Santa Cruz, turned to Lemonaid when she had a sinus infection. “I jumped online, put in my symptoms and 15 minutes later had a prescription waiting for me at a CVS down the street,” she said. “It was so fast and so easy that I used it again for an acne antibiotic.”

Startup mentality

Applying an Internet startup mentality to health care and using structured questions and algorithms to treat routine problems are real advances, said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a leading telehealth researcher at Harvard Medical School.

“The concern is obviously in the details,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Are their algorithms effective in terms of flagging cases that are not appropriate for this type of care? Do they have means of talking to patients and addressing follow-up questions or concerns? There are too many transient pill mills on the Internet for Viagra that are not proving high quality care.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid