Patient Preferences in HIV Treatment and Testing

Patients’ values and preferences play a pivotal role in optimising both antiretroviral therapy and HIV testing services. Individuals living with HIV often balance the efficacy of medication against potential side effects, dosing frequency, pill burden and the perceived impact on daily life. Similarly, preferences for testing modalities—whether rapid point-of-care tests, self-sampling or facility-based screening—depend on factors such as privacy, waiting time, sample collection method and cost. Discrete choice experiments and other stated-preference methods have been widely used to elicit these priorities, revealing marked heterogeneity across populations. Understanding such variation has informed the design of differentiated service delivery models, enhanced adherence, improved retention in care and increased uptake of testing among diverse groups, including pregnant women, key populations and communities in resource-limited settings. Integrating patient preferences into policy can strengthen person-centred care, reduce barriers to service uptake and ultimately contribute to global efforts to achieve universal treatment and diagnosis targets.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Patient Preferences in HIV Treatment and Testing publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in patient preferences in hiv treatment and testing across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Discrete choice experiment (DCE): A quantitative technique that presents individuals with hypothetical scenarios composed of multiple attributes and levels, enabling the estimation of the relative importance of each attribute in decision-making.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART): The regimen of medications prescribed to suppress HIV replication, preserve immune function and prevent disease progression.

Preference heterogeneity: The variation in expressed priorities and choices among individuals or subgroups, reflecting diverse values, experiences and circumstances.

References

1. Patients’ preferences for antiretroviral therapy service provision: a systematic review. Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation (2021).
2. How Can the Health System Retain Women in HIV Treatment for a Lifetime? A Discrete Choice Experiment in Ethiopia and Mozambique. PLOS ONE (2016).
3. Heterogeneous HIV Testing Preferences in an Urban Setting in Tanzania: Results from a Discrete Choice Experiment. PLOS ONE (2014).
4. Stated-preference research in HIV: A scoping review. PLOS ONE (2019).