20-Minute STI Tests Could End Australia's Days-Long Wait

Getting tested for an STI in Australia still means giving a sample, going home, and waiting days for the result. This week in Melbourne, Stigma Health and Roche Diagnostics Australia demonstrated a 20-minute STI test that could upend that routine: a rapid PCR system that detects chlamydia and gonorrhoea from a single sample in about 20 minutes, returning results in roughly the time it takes to finish a coffee.

The companies say the 20-minute STI test could push testing beyond the clinic entirely — into community settings, pop-ups, and even festivals and events, places where people actually are rather than places they'd rather not go.

Why 20 minutes changes the math

Australia has been losing ground on STIs for years. Gonorrhoea diagnoses have doubled over the past decade. Chlamydia is still the country's most commonly diagnosed STI, with 101,742 cases recorded in 2024 — about half of them in people aged 20 to 29. And yet only 16 per cent of Australians aged 16 to 49 report having ever been tested for an STI at all, according to figures from Stigma Health. That is a striking mismatch: the infections concentrate in young adults, the group least likely to walk into a clinic. For that age bracket, a 20-minute STI test could be the difference between getting tested and not bothering at all.

That gap between giving a sample and coming back for treatment is where infections keep spreading. Some people never return for their results, and others pass the infection on while they wait. A 20-minute STI test collapses that window to a single visit, according to the companies. "Rapid STI testing means we can take this beyond traditional settings and bring it closer to the people who need it," said Stigma Health founder and CEO James Sneddon. "Faster answers can mean earlier treatment, fewer people lost to follow-up and less opportunity for an infection to be passed on."

Anand Vairavan, Managing Director of Roche Diagnostics Australia, told the demonstration that too many people delay testing because it feels inconvenient or uncomfortable, and that 20-minute results could turn it into one straightforward appointment — with treatment decisions made while the patient is still in the room.

What still has to happen

The 20-minute STI test was a demonstration, not a launch. Whether the system reaches actual clinics will come down to the usual unglamorous details: how it performs outside controlled settings, what it costs, and how it slots into existing sexual health and primary care services. Rapid testing is genuinely promising for two infections that often have no symptoms at all — chlamydia and gonorrhoea frequently go unnoticed, which is exactly why people who feel fine skip the multi-day testing pathway.

It also arrives as part of a wider shift in Australia toward faster, less clinic-dependent STI testing. In January, the TGA approved a rapid at-home self-test for chlamydia and gonorrhoea for women, made by Australian company Touch Biotechnology, which returns results in 15 minutes from a single vaginal swab — a move aimed at the same barriers of stigma, cost, and clinic hassle.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne's Doherty Institute have separately built a portable CRISPR-based test that detects four common STIs at once — including syphilis — in under an hour, and can even spot a key antibiotic-resistance marker in gonorrhoea at the point of care. According to the institute, the device was validated at 97 to 100 per cent accuracy against lab PCR in 900 clinical samples, and the study is published in The Lancet Microbe. The throughline is the same across all three: testing that meets people where they are, instead of asking them to endure the worst parts of the process.

The pressure behind these efforts is considerable. Syphilis cases more than doubled over the past decade, and Australia's Chief Medical Officer declared it a Communicable Disease Incident of National Significance in August 2025 — a pattern also playing out elsewhere, as syphilis surges in Japan show. The Stigma Health–Roche system had its first public showing at the 2026 Australasian HIV&AIDS Conference and the Australasian Sexual and Reproductive Health Conference at Pullman Melbourne Albert Park, where eligible attendees could try the rapid model for themselves. For everyone else, it's a sign of what's coming: the 20-minute STI test era may be closer than it looks, and more reporting on testing, contraception, and sexual health lands regularly in the Sexual Wellness section. Learn more about the rapid testing demonstration in Medical Republic's health research roundup, or read RPA's report on the trial.