Smart50 alumni Hyphen Health delivers 50,000 online STI tests across the country

In a move designed to break taboos around sexual health and STI testing, regional NSW-based health-tech startup Hyphen Health has upped the ante on locker room conversations by sponsoring their local Maitland Rugby Club this season.

“As the leading provider of online STI testing, Hyphen Health doesn’t shy away from awkward conversations and tackling taboos around STIs”,  rugby-playing James Sneddon, CEO and co-founder told SmartCompany.

The rugby club partnership has been well received by the players and community with co-founders Sneddon and Dr Mitchell Tanner competing on rival teams – whenever they meet it’s now referred fondly by locals as the ‘Sexual Health Round’.

“We have a billboard on the side of the pitch saying ‘STI testing if you score in 2024’,” said Sneddon.

“If you need to have a laugh about it to break the ice then bring it on, it’s how you get the conversation started right? Normalising sexual health is going to have exponential benefit for local communities and future generations”.

The evolution of a health-tech

Founded in 2020 by practitioner Dr Mitchell Tanner and accountant and entrepreneur Sneddon, Hyphen Health is on a mission to make STI testing available to every Australian.

“That means removing the need for that awkward face-to-face doctor visit,” said Sneddon.

The brainchild of a routine doctor’s appointment running 90 minutes late, Hyphen Health now claims to be Australia’s largest sexual health clinic. The innovative digital health service is positively transforming the sexual health landscape.

“I’m an accountant by trade,” explains Sneddon, as he talks about the company’s origins. “One day I was sat in a doctor’s just watching customers at my cafe across the road, with the doctor running 90 minutes late. I thought there had to be a better way, an ”Uber for Doctors’”. I met Mitchell along the way as a consultant, we hit it off, and in 2020 we launched Hyphen Health.”

“Technology is really great at replacing the many frustrations of face-to-face health contact.”

“As we found product-market fit at the end of 2020 and started scaling exponentially, I decided to commit full-time. We raised $140,000 in angel investment which got us to profitability, and we’ve grown the team from there. Recently we received $250,000 venture debt via Lighter Capital to continue our growth – they were very helpful.”

Hyphen Health provides asynchronous healthcare services in a space where people often shy away from traditional discussions. Asynchronous is about offering a patient-focused, patient-centric approach to overcome those barriers, fairly inexpensively.

“We offer three key pathways,” Sneddon said. “Stigma Health covers everyone, PrEP.Health follows HiV convention for testing and medication, and ROIDSAFE offers blood works for people using performance-enhancing drugs.”

Hyphen Health says it is already Australia’s largest sexual health clinic group, delivering STI testing to over 30,000 people over the last year through an online, discreet, convenient sexual health service.

“We’re now diagnosing more than one in 20 STIs of those diagnosed nationwide, we’re doing one in 30 nationwide tests. We’re punching above our weight.”

“Most people never have an STI test, there’s awkwardness, most STIs are asymptomatic, but they can be pretty rough.

“People don’t want to have the conversations, and doctors weren’t asking patients – particularly younger patients – while they were in for something else.

“In 2019 we created an automated referral form, giving people an instant referral. With automation, we went from doing 70 or 80 referrals a month, to 300, and now we’re doing 4000 plus a month and growing

Most people don’t know they have an STI

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1 million STIs are acquired every day worldwide, the majority of which are asymptomatic – meaning someone might not even be aware they have an STI because they aren’t showing any obvious symptoms.

In Australia, STIs continue to rise, with the most recent report showing 10,918 cases of Chlamydia — 33% higher than the historical five-year mean.

Regionally, the impact is significant, and one of the main reasons Sneddon and co-founder Dr Tanner got Hyphen Health off the ground – to acknowledge the issue in their local community.

Stigma Health offers comprehensive testing with a bulk-bill option for Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV.

The rugby club partnership runs through the 2024 season.

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