Home testing for HIV antibodies became available in the United States in 1996. Two different testing kits - more accurately, home sampling kits, which enable people to send blood away for testing - have been approved for sale by pharmacists. There are no indications that such kits will become available in the UK in the near future, and strict regulations exist regarding who can perform HIV tests. Major AIDS organisations in the UK have consistently opposed the idea of any form of home testing, arguing that HIV testing should always be conducted with full pre- and post-test counselling.

However, US authorities decided that the potential benefits of home testing services outweighed the disadvantages, and that the systems proposed by the makers contained enough safeguards of confidentiality and the client's emotional reactions to the test result.