Online services offer STD tests, access to results

Public health officials attempt to harness the Internet to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. April 18, 2005.

After complaining for years that the Internet was increasing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and associated risky behavior, public health officials are now attempting to use the medium to reverse STD incidence rates. And these efforts involve more than just delivering traditional safe-sex messages. In some areas, patients can go online and order selected lab tests, get results and even use specially designed electronic cards to notify partners.

"If people can find friends on the Internet, we should be able to find disease," said Richard Rothenberg, MD, MPH, secretary-treasurer of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Assn.

For example, last August researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore launched a Web site allowing women in Maryland to order kits for at-home specimen collection. These could then be mailed in and tested for gonorrhea and chlamydial infections. Results are available by telephone and those with positive test results are referred to local public health clinics.

In San Francisco, the Dept. of Health allows patients to order syphilis tests and access results online -- all without the hassle of long waits at a clinic. As an add-on to the usual contact tracing by public health officials, the department also hosts a Web site where patients can use e-cards to notify partners that they may have been exposed to an STD.

Public health officials are taking these actions because of growing recognition that STD rates continue to go up.