"In the U.K. checking your HIV status is now nearly as easy as taking a pregnancy test. BioSure UK has begun selling http a  takehome HIV test that lets customers prick their fingers smear the blood on a testing stick and get their HIV results within  minutes. BioSures test goes beyond any of the athome tests available on the U.S. market which are either not as fast or not as accurate. When asked if any test similar to BioSures new takehome test was in development Tara Goodin a press officer for the Food and Drug Administration said The FDA cannot confirm the existence of or comment on any currentpending product applications. The FDA has approved two takehome HIV tests but neither has all the strengths of the BioSure test. The Home Access HIV Test System lets patients collect blood at home but it must then be sent to a clinic for testing. Users get their results by calling the company. OraQuick on the other hand is an oralbased athome test that does let users see their results immediately but it has http an . percent chance of a false negative. In contrast BioSures blood test has http a much lower . percent chance that a person who is really HIV positive will test negative. Both countries have tried to make it easier to be tested. The United Kingdoms National Health Service offers free HIV testing. In the United States the Affordable Care Act designates https HIV testing as a preventive service meaning that all insurers must cover it without charging a copay. But if the goal is to let patients test as accurately as possible at home the United States is falling behind. The two countries have roughly comparable rates of undetected HIV infections although they use different methods to make those estimates. In the U.K. Public Health England a division of the Department of Health began testing anonymized blood samples that had been collected for other reasons. It adjusted the raw data to mirror the demographics of the U.K. as a whole and estimated http that in   percent of all residents with HIV were undiagnosed. The United States meanwhile uses new laterstage HIV cases to estimate who must have been infected but undiagnosed four years earlier. In a  study researchers estimated http that in  approximately  percent of all HIVpositive people in the United State were undiagnosed. That suggests that both countries still face serious gaps in diagnosis. The British test will probably make it easier for people to be screened for the first time and will allow people to rescreen themselves more frequently. There is a lag of about three months between initial HIV infection and the point at which it is detectable. A sizable fraction of the undiagnosed may be people who have been tested just not recently enough. In a  study of British men who frequented commercial gay venues  percent of the men who tested positive for HIV had never been diagnosed http with HIV. This wasnt because they had never been screened  percent of the undiagnosed men had been tested for HIV previously. Sixtytwo percent of these previously screened men erroneously believed themselves to be HIVnegative. Adopting some version of the British athome test could help Americans who have already been tested keep up their screening schedule. Theres a benefit in regular screening even for patients who dont http wind up connecting with a doctor. In a small British study of  gay and bisexual men who were newly diagnosed as HIVpositive the use of condoms after the diagnosis doubled http relative to the rates of use prediagnosis  percent to  percent of respondents. And because the incidence of other sexually transmitted infections declined for these men after the diagnosis the scientists had reason to believe the selfreports of condom usage were accurate.httpsfivethirtyeight.comfeaturestheuksnewathomehivtestisbetterthananythingwehaveintheus The U.K.s new athome HIV test wont reach all the undiagnosed or guarantee that the people who test positive wind up receiving the care they need from a doctor but letting people check their status quickly and accurately is likely to produce cascading positive effects as HIVpositive people find it easier to seek care for themselves warn past partners about exposure and reduce risk for future partners. America needs to catch up."