Benefit | Challenge | |
---|---|---|
STI control | ||
Decrease time between diagnosis and treatment, more timely partner notification | ✓ | |
Decrease period of infectiousness, transmission, infectious pool and prevalence | ✓ | |
Reduced morbidity from untreated STIs | ||
Reduced complications (such as pelvic infertility disease and infertility) from untreated STIs | ✓ | |
More targeted treatment | ||
More targeted prescribing/reduced overprescribing | ✓ | |
Potential to mitigate antibiotic resistance | ✓ | |
Testing coverage | ||
Potential to normalise testing and increase testing coverage | ✓ | |
Potential use in outbreak settings | ✓ | |
Immediacy of POC result may be a barrier to testing in some circumstances | ✓ | |
Need to address existing barriers to STI testing | ✓ | |
Prevalence and test performance | ||
Influence of POC test sensitivity/specificity and prevalence on positive predictive value and negative predictive value | ✓ | |
Health communication | ||
Need for community engagement and health communication strategy | ✓ | |
Disease surveillance | ||
Potential to reduce completeness of chlamydia and gonorrhoea notification data | ✓ | |
Monitoring of NG antibiotic sensitivity | ||
Need for molecular antibiotic sensitivity surveillance methods | ✓ |
CT, Chlamydia trachomatis; NG, Neisseria gonorrhoeae; POC, point-of-care; STI, sexually transmitted infection.