In the October editorial, the PLoS Medicine Editors reflect on recent research and analysis in PLoS Medicine that highlights the need to fully evaluate rapid and convenient diagnostics. They argue that while rapidly determining the cause of an illness is important, speed and convenience alone are not enough to significantly change health outcomes. In a research article published earlier in the month, Augustine Choko and colleagues assess the uptake and accuracy of home-based supervised oral HIV self-testing in Malawi, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach in a high-prevalence, low-income environment. Their findings indicate that there is strong community readiness to adopt self-testing alongside other HIV counseling and testing strategies in high HIV prevalence settings in urban Africa. Rochelle Walensky and Ingrid Bassett suggest in an accompanying Perspective article that linkage to care must be demonstrated before the success of oral HIV self-testing can be determined, commenting that “beyond making care accessible, the next phase of self-testing feasibility studies must evaluate the completion of the care cascade from testing to treatment to demonstrate true self-testing success.”

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