39. Hyphen Health

Revenue: $1.03 million
Founders: James Sneddon, Dr Mitchell Tanner
Head office: Singleton, NSW
Year founded: 2020
Employees: 8
Industry: Healthcare
Website: hyphen.health

How Hyphen Health started

The brainchild of a routine doctor’s appointment running two hours late, Hyphen Health is Australia’s largest sexual health clinic, with the group comprising digital clinics Stigma Health and PrEP Health. This innovative digital health service is positively transforming the sexual health landscape for everyday Australians.

Driven by a patient-centric approach, Hyphen Health provides asynchronous healthcare services in a space where people often shy away from traditional discussions. Co-founders James Sneddon and Dr Mitch Tanner’s first online sexual health clinic, Stigma Health, proved pioneering, and PrEP Health followed soon after. Collectively, they’ve diagnosed thousands of cases and continue to grow year-on-year, backed by a commitment to make sexual-health testing completely accessible and stigma-free.

Growth

One of Hyphen Health’s initial growth goals was to address STI testing rates, which are alarmingly low mostly thanks to socioeconomic and psychosocial barriers. By creating a patient-centric service, Hyphen Health has been able to increase patient activation and serve those who may have fallen through the cracks of the health system.

Overcoming these challenges required innovative marketing in a highly regulated and stigmatised sector. Social media and search advertising restrictions further complicated promotion in the early days. Plus, the dominance of publicly funded sexual health services and changes in healthcare guidelines were hurdles it has had to face head-on as the business continues to evolve.

Where to next

The future for Hyphen Health is all about enhancing user experiences for accessibility and cost-effectiveness. It is also refining administrative and medical team processes to further improve patient outcomes.

Some of its growth strategies for the coming years include developing a referral and affiliate network, optimising the sexual health app and patient portal, and paving the way for a home-testing pathology service to remove more barriers to healthcare.

Hyphen Health was shortlisted for The Marketing Award at this year’s Smart50.