Media

Releases, assets and answers

Media contact

Contact: Dr Tom Morley, Founder & Medical Director
Email: [email protected]
Response: Same day. A mobile number is given on request.
Interviews: In person in Melbourne, phone or video.
Social: @pricklyhealth (opens in new tab)

Releases

20 September 2026Melbourne sexual health GP launches Prickly, an at-home STI testing service delivered across Australia, as annual gonorrhoea diagnoses pass 42,000

Doctor-reviewed testing for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV, collected privately at home and analysed by a NATA-accredited lab – $69 with a Medicare card.

MELBOURNE, 20 September 2026 – Days after national surveillance data showed gonorrhoea diagnoses have risen 57% in a decade, a Melbourne sexual health GP has launched Prickly, an Australian at-home STI testing service with a doctor at both ends of the process – reviewing every request before collection equipment is posted, and every result before it reaches the patient’s inbox.

The Kirby Institute’s latest data, released on 15 September 2026, recorded 42,393 gonorrhoea diagnoses and 94,184 chlamydia diagnoses across Australia in 2025, with about half of chlamydia diagnoses in people aged 20 to 29. Most of these infections cause no symptoms, so regular testing is the only way to find them – yet for many people the barrier isn’t awareness, it’s the waiting room.

Prickly is built for people without symptoms. A 5-minute online request is reviewed by an Ahpra-registered Australian doctor, who confirms that at-home testing is suitable and orders the tests that match the person’s exposures. Collection equipment arrives in an unmarked mailer box by Australia Post, samples go back to the lab with a prepaid return label, and results are emailed privately 3–8 business days later. Lab samples are analysed by PCR at a NATA-accredited partner lab – the same testing a sexual health clinic uses. If a result needs action, a telehealth follow-up with a doctor is included at no extra charge, with prescriptions, referrals and help telling partners where needed.

“STI rates continue to climb, and most of the infections we find have no symptoms at all,” said Dr Tom Morley, the Melbourne sexual health GP who founded Prickly and is its Medical Director. “We built Prickly to make personalised STI testing – managed by doctors from request to result – accessible at home, anytime, so every body can play safe.”

“This isn’t a website that sells a box. It’s a clinical service that happens to arrive by post,” Dr Tom said. “A doctor decides whether at-home testing is right for you, which sites to test, and what happens next. If it isn’t right for you, we point you to the right clinic instead.”

Prickly charges one flat fee per test, with no subscriptions or memberships: $69 for Medicare card holders, with lab pathology bulk billed to Medicare; $69 for overseas student and visitor health cover holders, with pathology billed to their insurer; and $139 for a Private test that bills nothing to Medicare or an insurer and is opted out of My Health Record by default. Each fee covers doctor review, delivery and return shipping, home sample collection and follow-up.

Privacy is built into the service rather than added to it. Prickly runs no advertising trackers or analytics pixels on its website, health and payment data sit under the Australian Privacy Principles in an ISO 27001-certified medical record, and the mailer box carries nothing that identifies its contents.

Prickly tests for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV and is available to people aged 16 and over who are physically in Australia. Anyone with symptoms, or a possible HIV exposure in the last 72 hours, is directed to in-person care. Prickly plans to add syphilis testing when a suitable at-home option becomes available in Australia.

Prickly is available now at prickly.com.au, delivered to any Australia Post address, including PO Boxes and Parcel Lockers.

Ends

Notes to editors

About Prickly. Prickly is an Australian at-home STI testing service for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV, operated by Prickly Health Pty Ltd (ABN 26 686 380 156) and made in Melbourne. An Ahpra-registered doctor reviews every request, decides whether at-home testing is appropriate, and orders the tests that fit each person’s situation. Collection equipment is delivered to the patient's door, samples collected at home and posted back to be analysed by a NATA-accredited partner lab. Every result is reviewed by a doctor, with telehealth follow-up included where a result needs action. Testing is for people without symptoms; anyone with symptoms needs to be seen in person at a sexual health clinic, GP clinic or urgent care clinic. Prickly is LegitScript-certified and receives no payment or commission from any other provider.

About Dr Tom Morley. BMedSc, MBBS, MIPH, FRACGP. Dr Tom is a Melbourne-based sexual health GP and the Founder & Medical Director of Prickly. He practises in community sexual health in Melbourne, with special interests in HIV, sexual health and viral hepatitis, and built Prickly so that personalised STI testing, managed by doctors from request to result, is accessible for every body. A fuller biography is at prickly.com.au/dr-tom-morley.

The HIV self-test. Prickly’s collection equipment includes the Atomo HIV Self Test, a fingerprick screening test for HIV antibodies included in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) for self-testing at home, which gives a result in 15 minutes. The test may not detect HIV acquired in the last 3 months, so consult a medical practitioner if exposure was possible during this time. The test is a screening test and a positive test result requires confirmatory laboratory testing on the request of a medical practitioner. Always read the label and follow the directions for use.

Data sources. Diagnosis counts: Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney – STI rates remain high in Australia’s latest sexual health data (opens in new tab), 15 September 2026. The 57% decade increase in gonorrhoea diagnoses: Kirby Institute 2025 national surveillance data as reported in The Guardian (opens in new tab), 15 September 2026.

Media contact. Dr Tom Morley · [email protected] · prickly.com.au · @pricklyhealth (opens in new tab). Email is the contact route and is answered the same day; a mobile number for deadline calls is given on request.

Sources

STI rates remain high in Australia’s latest sexual health data (opens in new tab), Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, 15 September 2026.
National gonorrhoea data (opens in new tab), Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney.
Gonorrhoea and syphilis rise by more than 50% in Australia (opens in new tab), The Guardian, 15 September 2026.
Atomo HIV Self Test – directions for use (opens in new tab), Atomo Diagnostics.

About Prickly

At a glance

What it is: At-home STI testing delivered across Australia
Launched: September 2026
Operated by: Prickly Health Pty Ltd, ABN 26 686 380 156, Melbourne
Medical director: Dr Tom Morley BMedSc, MBBS, MIPH, FRACGP – Ahpra MED0001782578
Tests for: Chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV
Fees: $69 with a Medicare card, $69 with OSHC/OVHC, $139 Private
Who it is for: People aged 16 and over, physically in Australia, without symptoms
Laboratory: PCR at a NATA-accredited partner lab
Certification: LegitScript-certified (opens in new tab)

How the service works

Request online. Complete a five-minute online request. A doctor then reviews your answers and confirms that at-home STI testing is suitable for you.
Receive your equipment. Collection equipment tailored to your exposures usually ships the next business day in an unmarked mailer box with Australia Post tracking.
Collect at home. Follow the included STI testing self-collection guide – swabs and urine for the lab, and a fingerprick HIV self-test you read at home in 15 minutes.
Post to the lab. Post your lab samples back the same day using the included prepaid return label – at any Australia Post Office, red street posting box or Parcel Locker.
Get your results. A doctor reviews every lab test result and emails you privately. Telehealth follow-up included – with help accessing treatment and telling partners, if needed.

Prickly’s collection equipment includes the Atomo HIV Self Test, a fingerprick screening test for HIV antibodies included in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) for self-testing at home, which gives a result in 15 minutes. The test may not detect HIV acquired in the last 3 months, so consult a medical practitioner if exposure was possible during this time. The test is a screening test and a positive test result requires confirmatory laboratory testing on the request of a medical practitioner. Always read the label and follow the directions for use.

Those three sentences are conditions of the permission that lets Prickly name the test at all, so please keep them together with any mention of it.

What it costs

Medicare STI test – $69 out-of-pocket. For Medicare card holders (green, blue & yellow) – with lab tests bulk billed to Medicare.
OSHC/OVHC STI test – $69 out-of-pocket. For overseas student/visitor health cover holders – with lab tests billed to your insurer. If your policy excludes pathology, our partner lab invoices you directly – typically around $70.
Private STI test – $139 out-of-pocket. For maximum discretion – nothing billed to anyone else, and opted out of My Health Record by default.

Every test includes doctor review & follow-up, delivery & return shipping and at-home sample collection.

What we’re often asked to confirm

Symptoms mean in-person care. Anyone with symptoms is directed to a sexual health clinic, GP clinic or urgent care clinic, where they can be examined and often treated on the spot.
Syphilis is not tested at present. Prickly plans to add it when a suitable at-home option becomes available in Australia.
A possible HIV exposure in the last 72 hours is urgent and is directed to getpep.info (opens in new tab), not to a test in the post.
The website carries no analytics or advertising trackers. That is a deliberate design decision, not an oversight.
Free HIV self-tests are available elsewhere. Anyone who wants an HIV self-test alone, at no charge, can order one from HIVTest.au (opens in new tab), run by NAPWHA. Prickly is a doctor-managed test for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV together, and says so.

Assets

The descriptor is “an at-home STI testing service”. Prickly is not a telehealth service: telehealth names the follow-up consultation only, and the testing itself is doctor-requested pathology with samples collected at home.
It isn’t a self-test for chlamydia or gonorrhoea. Those samples go to a NATA-accredited laboratory for PCR testing and a doctor reviews the result. There is one device in the box, and the conditions on naming it are under How the service works.
Campaign imagery shows illustrations, not patients or customers. Please don’t caption a figure as either, and don’t pair one with a test result.
Please don’t recolour, stretch or add effects to the wordmark, and keep clear space around it of about the height of the triangle.
No partner is named as an endorser. Prickly receives no payment or commission from any other provider, and nothing here implies that another organisation endorses the service.

Prickly logo

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Dr Tom Morley, Prickly Founder and Medical Director.
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Campaign imagery

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Social ad frames

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Website screenshots

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Words you can use

Boilerplate

Prickly is an Australian at-home STI testing service for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV, operated by Prickly Health Pty Ltd (ABN 26 686 380 156) and made in Melbourne. An Ahpra-registered doctor reviews every request, decides whether at-home testing is appropriate, and orders the tests that fit each person’s situation. Collection equipment is delivered to the patient's door, samples collected at home and posted back to be analysed by a NATA-accredited partner lab. Every result is reviewed by a doctor, with telehealth follow-up included where a result needs action. Testing is for people without symptoms; anyone with symptoms needs to be seen in person at a sexual health clinic, GP clinic or urgent care clinic. Prickly is LegitScript-certified and receives no payment or commission from any other provider.

Bio for Dr Tom Morley

Dr Tom Morley, in 60 words

Dr Tom Morley (BMedSc, MBBS, MIPH, FRACGP) is a Melbourne sexual health GP and the Founder and Medical Director of Prickly, an at-home STI testing service delivered across Australia. He practises in community sexual health in Melbourne, with special interests in HIV, sexual health and viral hepatitis, and built Prickly so that personalised STI testing, managed by doctors from request to result, is accessible for every body.

Dr Tom Morley, in 150 words

Dr Tom Morley (BMedSc, MBBS, MIPH, FRACGP) is a Melbourne sexual health GP and the Founder and Medical Director of Prickly, an at-home STI testing service delivered across Australia.

He graduated from the Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney, where he also completed Bachelor of Medical Science and Master of International Public Health degrees. His public health studies focussed on primary care HIV and sexual health program development in resource-constrained settings, and on international humanitarian crisis response. He moved to Melbourne in 2013 to complete his postgraduate training in general practice, for which he was awarded the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ Richard Clinton Gutch Medal.

He practises in community sexual health in Melbourne, with special interests in HIV, sexual health and viral hepatitis. Outside the consulting room he works in health service delivery innovation, as a medical education advisor, and in international health in the Asia-Pacific region.

He founded Prickly so that personalised STI testing, managed by doctors from request to result, is accessible for every body.

Quotes from Dr Tom Morley

Approved for use, attributed to “Dr Tom Morley, Founder and Medical Director of Prickly”. If you need something on a subject that isn’t here, email us at [email protected].

On privacy

“Nothing on the box says what’s inside it, and nothing about the Private test touches Medicare or a health fund. People put off testing because of who might find out – a flatmate, a parent on the same Medicare card. Taking that worry off the table is as much a part of the service as the test itself.”

On why symptoms mean a clinic

“If you have symptoms, at-home testing isn’t the right path, and we’ll say so and point you to a clinic. Symptoms need someone to examine you, and often to treat you that day. Turning people away is part of doing this properly.”

On a doctor reviewing every request

“A doctor decides whether at-home testing suits you, which sites to test and what happens next. That’s the difference between a clinical service and a box in the post – and it’s why a result that needs action comes with a consultation, not just an email.”

On testing as routine

“Most of the infections we find cause no symptoms at all, so the only way to know is to test regularly. For a lot of people the barrier was never the knowing – it was the waiting room.”

On distance

“Australia Post reaches every address in the country. If you’re hours from a sexual health clinic, that shouldn’t be the reason you don’t test.”