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Patients, providers, and staff are doing far too much manual work, and with today’s tech it’s time to operationalize.
This Fertility Field Overview breaks down the current state of AI-enabled operations, patient journey software, device innovation, cryo safety…
…and where the field is falling behind.
This episode covers:
My bold prediction regarding IVI RMA’s approach to tech adoption (Hint: Think late 2000s Google)
Why manual workflows are burning out staff and frustrating patients
The operational tech stack clinics should already be building toward
Where large vendors are stalling (and where fertility-first companies are stepping up)
How AI, automation, and safer cryo systems could redefine clinic operations
What recent conversations with operators, physicians, and scientists suggest about what’s coming next
Get an even deeper inside look at the current state of fertility networks from our recent Intel Articles:
Artificial Intelligence, Devices & Consumables, Software, Patient Journey, Cryo Safety
You Can Stop Being Left Out Now, Y’Know
Next Big Exposure Before ESHRE!
If your organization belongs to this category but wasn’t included in this category overview podcast episode, then your competitors are dominating the attention of your customers: REIs, fertility network executives, embryologists, and others.
These same competitors will get more coverage in a report or podcast episode, about your category
To start the year
Before PCRS
Before ESHRE
Before ASRM
Why let them get all the attention?
If you don’t want to miss out before ESHRE, you have to join the IVF Heroes Universe as a sponsor now, before the next deadline.
You read it. Your employees read it. Your customers read it. Why miss out when you get so much for so little?
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Griffin Jones (00:08)
Patients, providers, and staff are doing way too much, way too damn much. It's not acceptable. The technology is there. Unfortunately, it's your job to figure it out. I'm just the guy that tells you about it.
but providers staff and patients.
cannot be doing all of these manual tasks. I lay out the tech suite for you.It's time to operationalize. With regard to devices, a lot of large corporations are doing nothing because fertility is a drop in the bucket to them. And with regard to new tech adoption, I have a very specific prediction about IVI RMA and I'm piecing together little things that I picked up on or inferred and made up completely out of nowhere from interviews Lynn Mason, Tom Molinaro, Iris Gonzalez, and Denny Sakkas And then I think about what people like doctors, Seidler, Bortoletto and Vaughn are doing. And so it gives me this little inkling that IVI RMA is going to do like Google in the late 2000s. And this could be a figment of my imagination, but it'll still be fun to see if I'm right or not. This is the Fertility Fields Overview on AI operation software, patient journey systems, devices, and cryo safety. And enjoy cameos from my special guests.
Griffin Jones (02:23)
And look who just slid in to help me think about cryo safety and cryo storage and devices and equipment. Dr. Jason Barritt Chief Scientific Officer at KindBody. Thanks for sliding in.
Dr. Jason Barritt (02:33)
Hello.
Yeah, let's talk.
Griffin Jones (02:36)
start with cryo safety, seems like incidents still haunt the field, even if they're from a long time ago, there's always the specter of them. And it's not just incidents that might be caused in the lab, it's things that can happen outside of lab. So it's not just tank failures and things like that and gamete swaps, it's things like wildfires that happened at the beginning of last year, very close to where you live.
Dr. Jason Barritt (02:52)
.
Griffin Jones (03:04)
and things like the Palm Springs clinic bombing, which no one saw coming and hopefully we never see again. Talk to us about how embryologists think about these types of events.
Dr. Jason Barritt (03:17)
So I'll say that embryologists are exceedingly dedicated to the safety and security of the tissues that they are trusted with. It is one of the very special things about our job is they let us have that trust in it and we hold it very dearly. In fact, nobody would pick this career with the stress level associated with it and time commitment to it if you didn't believe in unbelievable safety and security of tissues that are for somebody else.
So we spend a significant amount of time thinking about this. And yes, as you said, the history of unfortunate, exceedingly bad outcome situations with either a tank failure, filling failure, or alarm monitoring failure, or even an access failure have haunted the field hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of places right now, today.
every single second are trying to protect all their tissues at many, many, clinics. Additionally, there's some very large, good, high quality centers that also do just storage. there is a entire business that's come in about this for the safety and security of tissues, monitoring systems, backup to monitoring systems.
weight-based monitoring systems, temperature-based monitoring systems. There's also cameras, thermal imaging, and everything that can possibly go into these things in order to be able to safely and secure the tissues that are in our hands during the time that ⁓ they are not actually making a baby. So it is an exceedingly important thing to embryologists. want to do everything?
Griffin Jones (04:52)
And that includes transport
and safety. I just think you're in Beverly Hills. You were so close to those fires that happened last year. I remember CryoFuture taking a lot of measures at that time to move specimens around and keep their facilities safe. What was that whole episode like?
Dr. Jason Barritt (05:14)
very stressful. Not only for all those who have been affected by the actual fires themselves and friends and family and colleagues, but also the fact that we wanted to protect all the tissues. And we actually had to not perform some things during that period of time in order to make sure that we were not going to have something that wouldn't be safe. So it was a very, very coordinated, huge amount of communication.
wonderful system that CryoFuture allowed us the opportunity to pre-plan, pre-stage, be ready, and then watch and monitor the progress of the fighting of the fire and or the fire itself. And through a huge amount of work with them they were able to move multiple centers.
entire cryo storage off to a much farther away, much safer situation in a exceedingly timely way in order to protect those. It was a very large lift and a very, very careful move in a very emergent situation.
and they actually took them to their safe location, which is safer than anybody else could have been with multiple monitoring systems and multiple fail safes in place. So it actually went to the most safe place that you could possibly go to in all of Los Angeles.
Griffin Jones (06:30)
And that's part of the reason why you're seeing more cryo storage providers and more demand for them, I would think, right? Like you've got Haven Cryo and that seems to be starting to grow because people want to their specimens in different places or be able to get their specimens to different.
Dr. Jason Barritt (06:48)
Mm.
Griffin Jones (06:49)
places in case one geographic area is compromised. So you got Haven Cryo growing. You've got Reprotech making an investment in IMT matcher. and, so like, going beyond just like, okay, we got witnessing over here and storage over here to trying to become an end to end traceability system. And I like Brad Zennstra a lot. and then you've got a couple of others.
Dr. Jason Barritt (06:51)
Hmm.
Griffin Jones (07:15)
that space. You've got fertility billing solutions that maybe not storage alone, but helping to automate the digital audit, giving tools, patients, consent pathways to help with all that documentation.
I think ultimately you're probably going to have two companies eventually be the ones that it's either Coke or Pepsi. What will it take for those two companies to get to that position? What will they have to have to be enticing enough to people like you?
Dr. Jason Barritt (07:47)
All these fertility clinics, all these wonderful people were never trained in, built places, and could never actually achieve all the monitoring system safety and security that a purpose-built system would allow.
can have daily measurements of liquid nitrogen in a tank. And we could have a remote temperature sensitive monitoring system. But we could also have a weight based one. And we could have then video cameras. And then we could have for safety and security. Then we could have thermal imaging cameras. And then, ⁓ we could have that in a bomb safe place. Or we could have that also in a earthquake safe place.
All of those things are what these purpose-built places allow. And they can do this because they purposely went at it as to what is the highest level and most oversight we can get. How do we get to two? I think that's quite a hurdle. I think it's gonna be a few more than that.
The thing is that we have some regions in our country that are the most used for these types of services and have the most tissues and they're going to maintain out of those primarily. But we've got to get the tissues there and back when needed in a safe way also. And that transport is exceedingly important. They have to have validated and all the time checked temperature logging of those transport tanks. We have to have couriers.
that are for medical grade transport. These tissues, any time they are not sitting in our tank appropriately, they're at risk, which means we need to minimize that or eliminate that whenever possible. And that's the thing that something like, CryoFuture is doing. They're not just about the storage where they have four or five different alarming systems. They have earthquake proof, they have bomb proof, they have all sorts of different things that they have prepared for, but they also take care of the transport back and forth.
monitor it every minute with temperature sensors in order to make sure it's there and trackers. You got to know where your stuff is. what truck it's in and that type of thing. So you've got to have all that information. No individual IVF center can do that. We need the partners who are specialists in this. Two, I think is too small. I think we're going to have to have a couple.
Griffin Jones (09:56)
Let's talk about devices, equipment, consumables. The thesis of the state of that category was that it's our biggest category in terms of number of companies, and among the fewest that we've heard anything from. So I think it's part of the problem of investment in the field is that you have a lot of companies that
make things to sell to lab directors and sell to REIs. Many of them are part of much larger groups and fertility is a small piece of their entire portfolio. So they don't invest a lot in it. They don't get a lot of autonomy. And so you have who otherwise should be big capital players, maybe not investing a lot in that space. and I'm,
guardedly optimistic with next spring, you know, consolidating a few of those folks and, and you don't have to name any names. But do you find that to be the case that, you know, it's like, hey, this is a monster company. And I can't get some of the basic things I need from them or basic customer service or get them to sponsor this regional embryologist meeting or whatever, just because you can't get the right person because
Whoever you know is just one person in a giant corporation.
Dr. Jason Barritt (11:19)
in the sense that almost all laboratories, want to consolidate and be organized and then have volume discounts and or access to the things specifically for the field. And that is what basically has happened is it's gotten to a limited number of distributors who are the key for
our success. They will get on site more of a certain item, larger lots of them, test them, maintain them, and then be able to hold and reserve for you if you wish to order and use over a longer period of time, specializing in our field. So it is a huge change to have things like, I'll say it, the Cooper companies having NextSpring come in, having IVF Store.
as major suppliers of these things. The truth is, yes, you can go find many of the individual items that they will all carry from any other individual source. And we used to do that, usually trying to get prices lower. But what we found is it's just so difficult to do. And when you have vendors that you have to go to for all your different things, it's very good news is that by consolidating them around the field,
of IVF. has massively increased our ability to get high quality items in timely fashion that have been tested and made sure that it is the right thing for our field.
Griffin Jones (12:37)
for those that do have a presence in the space, the plus side to them is that they can make a big headway in that sector if their competitors are just kind of sleeping giants because their attention is elsewhere. I think of Samsung, that's on the clinical side, obviously, but for ultrasound machines, you maybe had one player in the space for a long time.
And if Samsung is able to get in here and say, you know, we're starting to use AI tools and we're starting to work with people like Cycle Clarity, and we've got this thing called uterine assist, and we can reduce your scans, then they start to get a big penetration here. And hopefully that's a positive feedback loop that then gets them investing more in the fertility space. think they just won a large fertility clinic network they might be announcing that.
soon if they haven't already. But that's someone that is coming from a very large corporation, but been able to show a little bit of dedication to the space, benefit from it, and maybe they grow more because of that as well.
More up your alley about media. And I think that's Mendola on from CCRM and Dr. Baker on from Inception. They both like VitroLife's media.
With regard to the quality of media, what are you paying attention to?
Dr. Jason Barritt (14:01)
So I definitely think VitroLife has great products. They have invested a tremendous amount of time and money in some of the best manufacturing and some of the best testing so that they could stand behind it and absolutely make sure that even if anybody ever questioned anything about it, they had everything in place to make sure that it was meeting that highest standard and that it was possibly something else that might have been leading to
not most desired situation. A few of the other manufacturers have absolutely increased their testing and their controls and where they make it and how they make it. That has been done. I'll say the Irvine scientific ones increased the way they were testing it, moved to another even higher level included with their other ones in order to test their materials beforehand and during and then after in order to make sure it met that.
is a tough thing to make the decision on what media to use because there are good people all in support of it. None of the good places or another big networks probably make this decision anywhere based on money. The truth is difference in total amount of cost is not going to be enough to change anything.
What's going to be big enough is being able to get it, get it, get it at such a high quality, have all the controls and everything in place so that you can support and know you've minimized any variation that would occur, and therefore you have the highest quality outcomes based on it.
Griffin Jones (15:21)
Here's a prediction for you that no one asked for, but I'll give it anyway on the hardware side of things. The fertility partners in Canada, I think, is almost 100 % embryoscope or time lapse in all of their labs. I don't think that we've seen that on the US yet, but I think that it's coming. I've many of your peers on and I've all of them.
is time lapse a nice to have or a must have? And the consensus has been it's not a nice to have anymore. It's a must have because of our need to standardize. And I that it might be RMA slash Boston IVF that is the one to do that in the US. Here's why I'm saying that. Because I've had
Dr. Sakkas on and his view is that in five years time, every lab is gonna have some form of time-lapse imaging in their incubators. And then I've had Iris Gonzalez on who's the COO of RMA. And she talks about a system they have for meeting patient expectations and getting patient feedback. And then I see a group that
formed in the Boston area that was former Boston IVF docs. It's doctors Pietro Bortoletto, Dennis Vaughn, Dr. Emily Seidler. They have a group called Terra Fertility. And before Terra was even open, I saw an Instagram post from them that said, you can see your embryos development in real time. And they're using Embryoscope that way. And I thought they get it. They understand how
patients want to be plugged into everything for better or worse. You want to be able to see everything in real time. And that's such a good way to use time lapse imaging. I see Terra innovating that way. And then I think of, those innovators like Dr. Sakkas and Iris, and I think of RMA's CEO, who is Lynn Mason and Dr. Tom Molinaro their chief medical officer who are, I think, both forward thinking.
Dr. Jason Barritt (17:22)
You
Griffin Jones (17:27)
And I think they look at that group that splintered off of, one of their groups that maybe could have potentially been a part of them. I think it's like in the late 2000s, Jason, where they're like, we need to incubate this in our own ecosystem so that people aren't breaking off to do this kind of stuff elsewhere. We need them to know that they can do that here. And so I wonder,
Dr. Jason Barritt (17:34)
their acquisitions.
Griffin Jones (17:52)
if they're not the ones to say, let's have Embryoscope or time lapse imaging in every single lab and they're the ones to do it and they do it sooner than later. because they see that, ⁓ people are using this to be on the cutting edge. We can be the ones, the first ones to do a network in the if I'm I'm kicking, Esso.
while they're down because I don't even know if they're still in business. say, you have no idea what you're talking about. a better year than ever. But all I'm just saying is, I don't hear anything from them. I think they both had CEO changes recently. think they both had North American sales and marketing teams recently. And just from where I sit as a marketer, it's like you don't get those windows for too long.
take advantage of it. ⁓ I don't know if they can provide the support to US groups like others can. again, maybe they can. I'm speculating all of that, just inferring all of it. But if I am, that means that other people are too. And so if I were people behind embryoscope, I'd be acting now.
Dr. Jason Barritt (18:40)
you
Griffin Jones (19:00)
well, before those other groups come back. Anyway, that's my prediction. What do you see on the hardware side? What are you paying attention to?
Dr. Jason Barritt (19:06)
In 2012, I was all in on time lapse. Yes, it happened to be the embryoscope at that point.
is a huge advantage to being able to select and follow embryos and see things This helps you do it. It's 5,000 times the information and what you get if you do just general culture. That's power in decision-making. It's power in conversation with patients to make them understand what is or is not happening.
in the right way. It is a huge advantage in the way patients are treated and their outcomes. it's expensive and that is probably the only thing actually holding it back because the incubators themselves are unbelievably good. The advantage and the reason this is going to go and it's going to go fairly quickly now is that it has so much information
And the one thing artificial intelligence systems like is information to make decisions based on. That leads to success for patients. AI is absolutely helping us.
pick embryos better, and the more information it can get, the better it's going to do. showing it the entire journey allows it to select it at an unbelievably different level, including being able to help us understand what is probably going on at the genetic level inside embryos. That in itself means way less costly PGT testing.
way less invasive testing, and as many doctors understand, unfortunately it's not 100%. And nothing is going to be. But this will give you an advantage to getting there much quicker and being able to select the most optimal embryos much quicker, which leads to ultimately the reason everybody comes to us. Take home a baby as quickly as you possibly can, successfully, normally.
Griffin Jones (21:00)
speaking of AI, one of the companies mentioned in the report is called Baibys, it's B-A-I-B-Y-S. I know that's a rising firm. I know that they automate sperm selection and that they took on a long standing challenge because 96% of sperm in a healthy sample
are abnormal, at least according to the source that was referenced there. Have you checked out that group at all? Or are there others that you've checked out that you're paying close attention to?
Dr. Jason Barritt (21:30)
So yes, there has been for actually a couple years now a ⁓ selection tool that will help identify the best, optimal sperm live so that you can go catch them and use it is a great system. I think it comes out from the IVF 2.0 group it makes an absolute
instantaneous microsecond selection of all the sperm that are on the screen and identifies them, follows them so you can track them and allows you to go get them. Similar thing is being done with idea here is yes, the vast majority of sperm are not optimal.
it is a true advantage to have whatever is being done by those companies to be able to select the most optimal sperm because most are bad. And yes, when we say, yeah, there's 30 million there, you only need one. Well, it is true, but you actually...
the right one. All of us came about because it was one that was going to work. We don't know how many wouldn't have worked, but it's all the other ones. So finding that right one is exceedingly important. Being able to do it live so that the embryologists can select those ones and use only those ones is exceedingly important. I will say that I've generally seen fertilization rates, normal fertilization rates, increase when you use better technology.
better separation, ultimately now a selection tool that can do it faster than any of our eyes or experience can do it, using artificial intelligence in order to figure that out, of which are the most optimal, using many factors that we can't spend time doing. Those are what's improving pregnancy rates and for fertilization, because we're getting the right sperm.
Griffin Jones (23:04)
One of the other big trends that's been happening is a rise of embryology academies. So there's a focus on getting more embryologists trained. saw that Dr. Schenckman just posted that she formed one ASRM has theirs that they're trying to get some more exposure for. IVF Academy has Dr. Magarelli as their dean on the clinical side. And then they've got Tony Anderson there running the embryology training program. And I think that they're really focused on
getting younger embryologists up to speed quickly, getting people to a place where then they can start focusing on some of the more senior level practices of being an embryologist. What do you make of this rise in embryology academies? Why didn't it happen
Dr. Jason Barritt (23:43)
Yes.
Griffin Jones (23:51)
10 years ago.
Dr. Jason Barritt (23:52)
So here's the thing. All of us directors were hiring and then having to train our own people internally. This is a lot of work and it takes a tremendous amount of not only time but money because you're spending an exceedingly important trained senior embryologist to train somebody who is not that and therefore you're actually taking two people's time in order to spend time on training. These schools allow first part of it at least to be done.
completely outside of the laboratory and not affecting normal operations and things that are going on at that and not taking away your senior embryologist from doing the great work that they already know how to do. So it's very inefficient to do it inside your own house. another program is called West or World Embryology Skills and Training out in Carlsbad out here in California. I have been a user per se yeah, yeah, yeah.
Griffin Jones (24:40)
I know Debbie and Bill have been at it a long time. So I don't mean to say that
nobody's been doing it. It's just that now it seems like more people have realized like we need more and I know that IVF Academy has invested.
Dr. Jason Barritt (24:45)
yeah. And Tony's been doing it for years too.
Tony's been at it for probably 10 plus years too. And going down to Texas to get trained and things like that. So many have seen this. What it gives is a giant basis for the field and everything about it and your ability to do it and want to do it. And that is the key thing. We're selecting out the...
individuals who really want to do it really will dedicate themselves to doing it. That is the key to the success. And if you can have that done by somebody else, you can get a candidate in that is even better and has a much better base to jump off from. Additionally, you can send people for additional training on specific skills and updates on those things, which is a huge advantage because it takes forever to do that inside your own house unless you're very, very large. And if you have six people that need to get trained, you can't do them.
You have limited resources. This type of program allows
also helps them advance faster in their career. I know it sounds like a big commitment at the beginning, but the truth is, that's what an apprentice situation was about. And that led to unbelievably wonderful things for many, many people in long careers.
I am fully for external training.
Griffin Jones (26:00)
The thing I want to conclude about is you can't talk about the lab or AI or any of it without talking about Conceivable. And it took a lot of people by storm last year in terms of people being really impressed with the system. And I I think they've got some things that they're going to be publishing this year, which we look forward to following. But the report, the state of report reported on and your discussion with Steve Brooks,
about the economics paper of economics in the lab. And that gets people thinking about Conceivable, but it is an issue certainly apart from them, whether people are trying to solve it with robotics and automation or not. What did you think of or did anything come to you after that conversation that you would further add?
Dr. Jason Barritt (26:47)
It is coming and it's coming faster than any of us would suspect. The reason is consistency and cost-effective use of resources. These are not cheap systems to develop, build, and put in place. But the truth is, once they are in place, they are the most efficient use, not only of the time of the people, but of the equipment, and therefore we can serve more people.
and do it at the highest quality level, which is really what we're in this for. We want them to be able to get served. And the only way to do that is to have systems in place that allow it to be cost effective and available when they need it. And that is the key thing here. The system is going to work and it's going to work very well at big scale.
This will allow it to be more centralized. I'll call it hub and spoke type situations, but of the highest quality care that is available to make it succeed at a level and be able to have
unbelievable consistency.
Griffin Jones (27:48)
Dr. Jason Barritt, thank you so much for coming on and helping us think about this.
Dr. Jason Barritt (27:53)
you. Have a great day.
Griffin Jones (27:53)
Another special guest at my door Lauren Berson is here with a special cameo appearance. Thanks so much for joining me Lauren
Lauren Berson (28:01)
I am pumped to be here.
Griffin Jones (28:02)
First, let's go over the state ofs and then I want to get your opinion. start with EMR slash clinic operations software category. The state of report that Inside Reproductive in January regarding that category really had to do with
fertility centers are so fragmented with their data, a lot of that has to do with people are trying to use EMRs as operating systems for everything when they were originally built to just be that electronic medical Eduardo Harrington talks about
Lauren Berson (28:33)
Yes.
Griffin Jones (28:36)
there's not a ton of CRMs at the clinical level. That's, I think, part of the problem. What's your take on this?
Lauren Berson (28:41)
this industry, think has been ignored by technology for a long time. And I don't, I've never really met a clinic that loves their EMR. But when you speak to, clinic staff who are embedded in this EMR all day long, trying to get things done and improve workflows, I think the reality is it took them years to integrate and it takes years or months.
right, to make changes. And it becomes a really challenging balancing act if you actually want to get things done. And I think the way we entered the space, instead of being a system of record, right, we thought about becoming a system of action. Meaning, to exactly your point, how difficult it is to make change in that core system of record.
there's a sort of set of emerging players like Conceive, like, Wawa or Salve that are trying to kind of say, you know what, we might be more of the operating system that connects patient management, clinic workflows, and maybe even payments into one system. And we can integrate with the EMR eventually, but we can actually get a lot more done given that those systems are just not as nimble, right? They're fragmented, not tech forward in a way.
I think there's a lot of momentum in that space, but at the end of the day, you still need an EMR.
Griffin Jones (29:58)
Is part of the challenge the scale and how small the fertility space is and it makes it harder to scale? Like if we were in a bigger field, would this be happening more quickly or would it be easier? The report mentions Metatex and I think they do business in the United States as well, but they've done a lot of business in Europe and they formed from the Nexus group and they're in
over 500 facilities in over 50 countries. They're in 2,400 clinics in 70 plus countries, or at least and nexus and astria, if I'm saying that correctly. And so they're able to reduce paperwork, they're to minimize disruptions. I think that helps having that scale. And when you're plugged into an entire continent like that,
Maybe that's the only way to do it. Maybe it's global or you see that? it global or bust? And would this be happening faster if the fertility space were larger?
Lauren Berson (30:53)
at the end of the day, what we're dealing with is complicated practice, complicated workflows, burned out clinicians in some cases.
And so there's almost like an aversion to changing systems, right? Because it took them so long to get there and they have so much on their plates. At the end of the day, adoption requires, deep integration, time, ripping out what they spent years working on. And if they're still getting things done and serving patients in a way in which they feel works,
it's really, really difficult to maintain or create that kind of change.
Griffin Jones (31:28)
Do you feel like that you need to focus on the US as an entrepreneur or North America or can you do global all at the same time?
Lauren Berson (31:37)
You know, it's interesting, we can and will do global. In particular, we have nurses and coaches around the world. We have some folks to support all different time zones. When I started the company, felt like, first of all, I'm here and I understand the US healthcare system the most. I felt like globally things would be too different, right? In terms of.
their healthcare systems and how patients move through the journey. And I've realized that there's actually a lot more commonality than there is difference. And so, know, Conceive in particular definitely lends itself well global presence.
Griffin Jones (32:09)
To your point too, there are some resistance points to change and I think it has to do with kind of when the company started. I think some companies started just before the internet even or before internet 2.0 at least and before the cloud. And so it's a lot harder for those companies to transition. Some are just starting now and then some are kind of in between. think Artisan's in an interesting position because
Lauren Berson (32:22)
Totally. Yes.
Griffin Jones (32:35)
They've been around for a little bit, but they started off in the cloud and they have also expanded a lot in different parts of the world. And so they've been gaining traction and then they decide who they're gonna integrate with. So they've integrated with CycleClarity. love that by the way. Anybody that integrates with CycleClarity, feel like just everybody should.
Lauren Berson (32:40)
Yeah.
Agree.
Griffin Jones (32:54)
it makes sense from a value standpoint. I like that they've done things with Xiltrix and so in focusing on lab safety. So I like the way that Artisan is has been expanding. And then I'm interested to see some new challengers come in the space. Engaged MD was a company that
Lauren Berson (33:02)
Mm.
Griffin Jones (33:09)
has been around for a while. This report talks about like now they kind of like have their first competitor like Berry Fertility is here. think Berry engages with Pinnacle if I'm not mistaken. Fact check me on that audience. But they have a smart intake solution. so they're working a lot more than than just consent.
Lauren Berson (33:20)
I
Griffin Jones (33:28)
It's about business intelligence, getting deeper insights with analytics and accelerating clinic workflows. I'll be interested to see what Berry does. For you, how do you feel like you have to decide how far you're going to expand into versus like that would be a distraction?
Lauren Berson (33:45)
I think the reality is we're still learning and we will always iterate with consumer demand, right? Which is patients and clinic demand because we serve, we service both. So for example, a year ago, if you had asked me if we would ever have patients talk to AI, I would say, absolutely not. Patients come to us because they want emotional support and they want to know they're talking to a human. Consumer behavior has changed significantly, right?
So we have, you know, we're starting to integrate AI in the front lines. You'll always know if you're talking to a chat bot, right, versus a human, and you can always bypass that, but it's just changed. I used Chat GPT for therapy once, you know, like we're in a crazy, crazy world. As we've embedded deeper into clinics that we partner with, and I think that is the key, really embedding yourself into workflows, we've identified new opportunities and challenges that are just not being solved. Again, because if we look at this space,
it's really nascent and there's just not a lot of solutions that have gotten traction. And so we will absolutely evolve our offering as sort of the market dictates and as our partners dictate. Cause we have some really deep partnerships now where we get into the clinic and we observe things that we can actually easily do because we have a technology solution that now is integrated.
Griffin Jones (35:00)
Do you feel that patient experience and patient journey is the thing to solve for right now?
made so many advancements on the science side. And of course, there's always more improvements to be made, but the patient journey has really lagged. Patient experience has suffered.
so that brings us into I think you really occupy a space. Is this the thing to solve for right now?
Lauren Berson (35:24)
I think there's so much to do, candidly. your point, I think the most we've done is innovation in the lab and the research there. Like we've definitely come a long way in the last several decades, but in many ways, we're still in infancy stages. I've said this many times, but I really believe that, right? We've, know, IVF outcomes have improved and that's amazing. And there's more and more research.
looking at how do we improve egg quality? How do we even measure it to improve it? There's a million different things. I do think the reality is, that's what's been ignored, is the patient experience. But I would clarify a little bit. I love about Conceive, obviously, because it's my second child, and my life's work, is that we do two things. We are actually solving for patient experience, but clinic outcomes and ROI.
So not only are we there 24 seven for patients to give them both the clinical reinforcement. So reinforcing their care by doctor, by patient around the world, wherever you are in three minutes or less, but we're there to provide emotional support, right? And then community on top. we are the full patient support layer, but by virtue of what we do, we're actually accelerating time to treatment, Reducing clinician workload.
and improving service recovery and reputation. And so I think those two things are really important to go hand in hand, Because I think there have been definitely a plethora of companies that have approached this from sort of just the patient angle, community groups and things like that. And I think that's great. And those need to exist and they will, right? There's thousands of Reddit forums and Facebook groups. But I think by actually providing almost like a digital twin for Dr. Copperman in New York, so that if you leave his office and you forget what he says, you come to us and we'll remind you.
To reinforce those SOPs and extend the reach of the clinic, that's the real sort of integration layer, I think, that is the thing that has not been solved. So while I think in some, a lot of things need to be solved in this space, I think this is a big one and it hasn't really been touched.
Griffin Jones (37:22)
And we have to too, right? Because patients are just stressed the F out. I like the research that Dr. Domar was referencing. but she saying they work with Navy SEALs, they work with the NFL, they used to work with Russian Olympians, and they've never seen stress tests, stress levels like they saw in the women that they were following during the Stim phase of their cycle. And...
if we don't solve
for this is only going to get worse and worse. It has been getting worse, I think, because of the anxiety of we're used to instant gratification and then with the more potential for communication. But if that potential is unmet, then anxiety raises. It seems like patients are demanding it.
Lauren Berson (38:06)
love Dr. Domar's research so much and all of the effort she's put into really understanding like levels of anxiety, right? And I think what's unique in fertility, which is why I think you see this a little bit differently because most patients are afraid to advocate for themselves.
But because this tech, tends to be a cash pay experience where you're shelling out tens of thousands of dollars. I think you have this sort of like, OK, wait a second, right? I want better care than this. And I didn't like that the way that was communicated or this completely fell through the cracks or there was an error here or an error there. And so I think all of this overwhelms the system. And the reality is these journeys are absolutely all consuming.
They take over your life when you're going through it. Like we measure, we map to the PHQ-9 on these markers of mental health, reduction in anxiety levels, improvement in optimism. If you just have a little support, right? Just a little bit more than ChatGPT-ing your way through it, like you're gonna have a better outcome.
Griffin Jones (39:04)
Tell us more about what you've done with RMA of New York and others, what Conceive has done.
Lauren Berson (39:09)
we do really three things really well. 24-7 care. You text us any time and we answer you in several minutes from nurses and coaches. When we're partnered with a clinic like with RMA of New York, we are there to reinforce your care every step of the way based on what your doctor's preferences are. So Dr. Copperman versus Dr. Sekhon they have different preferences even within that clinic.
And so we know Griffin is a patient of Dr. Sekhon and we're gonna answer this question probably the way she did in your appointment, but it's so overwhelming you don't retain the information. And we do it in minutes, the sophisticated questions like get on FaceTime and do IVF injection support, or should I do PRP for my endometrial lining And then secondly,
⁓ we have coaches. And this, think, I like to say we put the care in healthcare.
they do is they excel in just like helping you get your life back. And by virtue of this, you're able to make decisions and move faster through the journey because you're not getting stuck with, how do I manage my doctor appointments with work? We help you map all these things out. We go really deep.
The third thing we do is really diagnostic support. That's more preconception, but we can support patients who are actively in treatment, who are doing, know, who want ovulation support through blood testing.
able to move patients faster through the journey, but vastly reduce time spent per patient per month. We have after-hours support, so we take over that out-of-office message. you message your clinic at 5:01 and they say, our office is now closed, Conceive is there front and center, we answer those questions. And if the patient is satisfied, we send a report to the clinic. So they literally don't have to answer those questions the next morning. So we're really reducing duplicative work and reducing work on the clinician's shoulders. And the third piece,
that comes out of this is really the reputation management. We're the first place that patients come when they're upset about something. They're not always going to tell the clinic. The clinic will hear about the really crappy experiences, but everything in between, it's kind of that Yelp effect. And so we're able to help improve workflows before they become issues, identify when patients are maybe getting sick from a new medication. We've done all of those things with our clinic partners because we have this unique data lens and layer to say 10 % of patients are stuck booking their next appointment.
12 % of patients got sick from this new medication. And so we can help the clinic both solve one-off urgent scenarios of patients maybe wanting to leave, but also overall workflow improvement.
Griffin Jones (41:33)
All of the patient populations prior to needing IVF are also folks that need this type of digital interaction because if they just are asking all these questions to a fertility center, forget it, there is no bandwidth for it. And I think some have done a really good job of that. read in the report that Doveras I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, maybe it's Doveras but they have really focused on that. They've been able to
Lauren Berson (41:48)
There's none.
Griffin Jones (41:59)
help to fill the preconception gap. They took over 100,000 clinical studies, they synthesized them, make it into a personalized experience, and then they did a study with 600 participants from 46 different states showing their engagement, and more than half of those hadn't even seen a fertility professional yet. So we need something for those kind of folks. seems like...
Lauren Berson (42:22)
Yes.
Griffin Jones (42:23)
Doveras is tackled that and maybe you all have too.
thanks so much for coming on and helping me think about this.
Lauren Berson (42:29)
Always a blast hanging with you, Griffin.
Griffin Jones (42:31)
Doctors, nurses, managers, embryologists, they're responsible for way, way, way, way too much data entry. That's the central theme of the State of Artificial Intelligence report that was published by Inside Reproductive Health in January.
Data flows aren't automated. They're often manual. They're left up to the patient very often. a loss of control at the clinic level of how that happens.
and it's very expensive to pay personnel.
people that takes to move a patient through.
that clinical experience from team member to team member.
That's my good friend, Dr. Eduardo Harriton.
of RFC of the bay area.
painting the picture for us.
of what's going on with the underlying need for artificial intelligence for a number of different applications in the clinic and the lab.
There's just too much variability.
and that gap appears to be widening.
Patients expect personalized predictions, not general ones. They want transparency. When they say transparency...
They mean they want real-time updates all the time.
and they want it all to be But the legacy tools still require so much repetitive manual inputs.
And so the measurement's inconsistent.
So it's not like AI.
is a single category.
That's just the way we've been reporting on it now.
there's a lot of different applications.
and have to do with the problems that clinics are facing.
So clinics struggle with inconsistent follicular measurements.
inefficiencies of standard monitoring protocols.
And those challenges don't just affect clinical accuracy and patient experience.
messes up the predictability of lab and clinic workflow.
The report talks about how psycho clarity has been making a huge headway.
in resolving those issues for clinics.
They compared 177 IVF cycles.
where the REIs under predicted mature oocytes by 4.8.5%. But CycleClarity's algorithm
over predicted only by 0.71%.
in that cohort.
Cycle Clarity was much more accurate.
They also looked at some retrospective data.
with 858 patients.
and found that Cycle Clarity is ultrasound monitoring.
produce the same outcomes.
as traditional monitoring
time that it took to do all that was 66 % less. If I'm understanding correctly, you should go to the report to link to the original sources in case my interpretation is fuzzy.
what this means.
is that we have an AI tool.
that's as or maybe even more accurate.
then the way
Doctors and techs are doing it now.
and it can be done so much faster.
and communicate so many other technologies in real time.
Whether it's Cycle Clarity or others, these are the things that we have to be doing to get rote work off of clinicians and staff's plate.
You had similar things happening in the lab. Future fertility has been.
growing by a lot they recently added to insure coverage in Canada.
They help with oocyte grading. So obviously, two really big applications for that are fertility preservation and donor egg.
They've got a couple different products, violet, magenta, rose.
They introduced euploidy insights. Not sure if that's a product or a feature, but it's a non-invasive model that identifies which oocytes are most likely to develop into euploid blasts.
So it's Future Fertility if you want to check them out.
One of the things the state of artificial intelligence
reported on
is that patients are waiting far too long.
for treatment, they're waiting far too long even to get diagnosed.
Only 16% of women with infertility are ever formally diagnosed, according to this source. Some wait up to 11 years.
And the OBGYNs, who often see them first, they often don't have the tools.
or the training or the experience to properly assess them.
Levy Health has a clinical decision support system. They try to reduce the delays helping OB-GYNs the channel, giving them structured diagnostic pathways. In one of their pilots, 96% of women using Levy's software unknown diagnoses.
They averaged three newly identified conditions with many beginning treatment within eight weeks.
So they're triaging patients, they're triaging patients, they're triaging egg donors. streamline reserve revaluation.
among other things. so the whole point of Levy is to shorten the screening timeline.
to two to three months. So you're reducing the high attrition that often happens with donors and with patients for that matter.
Because Levy's taking care of that further upstream.
The report shows just how broad the AI category is.
We're scripted as a media company.
hundreds of thousands if not millions.
of women's health patients.
read and listen to at one point or another.
But they made the first LLM trained exclusively.
on medically reviewed women's health content.
at according to this report.
And they built it on Rescripted's content library and the resources provided by their partners. They call it Clara. Good name, Rescripted.
and they reach roughly 20 million women monthly. Is that right? sounds like a ton.
Either way, it patients for.
and those patients to determine what their probabilities for success are.
and UNIFI's machine learning apparently breakthroughs in that area because a lot of different clinics participated in that Univfy study. I don't know if you saw that study.
There are a number of different clinics. I wish I knew how many the patient number was at over 24,000.
And according to the report...
had dramatically higher conversion rates.
The report says 213 % those going to 180
and 241 % higher total IVF utilization, though I don't know over what time period.
That's referencing.
That would be really big. know Univfy has done a lot with machine learning.
You all can find the report.
by clicking through the sources listed in the State of Artificial Intelligence article. check that out.
because Univfy might be something that would really help you with your conversion rates.
And we haven't even gotten to business insights which is an area that US fertility again.
with my friend, Dr. Heriton being big of that, an IVY Fertility.
standardizing their data.
Because USF might have one EMR, but you're still acquiring clinics, right? I'm not sure if Ivy has one EMR, they might have different ones.
Even then, it's been entered different ways. You got to standardize that data some way. That is a nightmare to do.
You need a whole team of data scientists and data entry people cleaning up the data, double checking their work. They use Cercle You may have heard about Cercle They seem to really like it. Cercle was a company that asked a couple different people about who's adding the most value right now. I didn't prompt them with any multiple choice. Didn't even ask them what AI company is providing the most value. I just said what company is providing the most value. More than one person told me Cercle. That's how I heard about them originally, and it's because they address that fragmentation by standardizing the diverse data sets into usable formats for clinics. And they're really focused on reducing the hallucination rate so it's accurate, scalable, data-driven. And that's what we want AI to be.
