AI diagnostics, automation, and integrated platforms address variability, workflow strain, and scaling challenges in today’s fertility care systems
Inside Reproductive Health (IRH) counts no fewer than eighty companies that make and/or sell devices to IVF labs and fertility clinics. There may be many more. Yet because many operate as divisions inside larger corporations, they often struggle to innovate or commit deeply to the fertility sector.
The device and equipment companies who are actually addressing the pressure points of IVF delivery—diagnostic variability, embryology workflow, bottlenecks, and multi-site lab expansion--are only a fraction of the firms that could be doing so.
The delineation between incumbent companies and newcomers is not always clear because it is not only fertility centers that are consolidating around integrated platforms. In 2025, Nexpring Health formed from the merger of Hamilton Thorne, Cook Medical’s Reproductive Health business, and FUJIFILM Irvine Scientific’s medical media division. 2026 will tell what kind of commitment Nexpring devotes to the fertility space.
Work orders that once depended heavily on clinician interpretation--from follicle measurements to uterine assessments -- increasingly require standardized outputs. In the embryology lab, concerns over media quality, pH fluctuations, and handling-related incidents elevate the need for deeper quality control. Meanwhile, automation—particularly in andrology and embryology—has moved from speculative discussion to active strategic planning for clinics preparing to scale beyond current staffing.
Companies Slow to Invest in AI Integration, Quality Assurance. Samsung, Vitrolife buck that trend.
While many legacy device and equipment manufacturers have struggled to create new value, those that have done so share a common theme; reduce variation and accelerate throughput. Manual follicle measurement — averaging about 9.6 minutes per scan and varying significantly across clinicians — is being challenged by AI-based systems. These tools now achieve up to 98% correlation in follicle measurement while cutting scan times from 324 seconds to ~132 seconds.
Similar dynamics apply to uterine evaluations. Conditions such as adenomyosis, fibroids, or T-shaped uterus often require early detection, yet manual assessments remain inconsistent. AI-powered tools like Samsung’s UterineAssist, reduce scan times from roughly 10 seconds manually to one second through automated measurements of roundness, symmetry, and positioning.
Clinics are reorienting operations. Diagnostic steps historically outsourced — such as hysterosalpingography (HSG) — are increasingly being brought in-house to cut delays and streamline patient flow, especially important as demand grows and REI availability tightens. Demand for upgraded ultrasound, 3D imaging, and AI-based diagnostics reflects this trend.
In the lab, quality control continues to be a major concern for lab directors. One of “the most concerning (issues) is the need for universal standards for quality control from the commercial companies…higher standards when it comes to testing their media,” Dr. Robert Mendola, Lab Director in the CCRM Network, told IRH.
Vitrolife’s expanded MEA testing — including 78-hour assays with individual embryo cell counts — supports clinics facing pH concerns or batch-to-batch media questions. “If we say something’s bad, it’s bad. We don’t compromise safety. Not ever.,” MEA Laboratory Manager, Erik Strait told IRH.
2025 was a banner year for Vitrolife’s EmbryoScope. IVF Lab Directors collectively raised their voices saying that time-lapse incubators are absolutely necessary to standardize the IVF lab. Dr. Denny Sakkas, Chief Scientific Officer of Boston IVF, told IRH that he expects almost all IVF labs in the United States to have some version of time lapse imaging within roughly five years. An analysis of UCSF’s IVF Lab revealed that Embryoscope saved their team seven embryologist hours per day.
Challenges Poised to Overpower Current Lab Infrastructure.
Andrology is expected to be even more of a pain point for reproductive health clinics, with many device companies failing to anticipate the growing challenges . In her book Countdown, Dr. Shanna Swan portends that by 2045 50% of men will be infertile and most couples may have to use assisted reproduction. The same source claims that the average male sperm count has decreased by 50% in as many years and that the criteria for ‘Normal Morphology’ has dropped from >14% to >4%.
Training institutions such as IVF Academy USA are stepping in to address this gap, offering academically rigorous programs designed to elevate expertise across embryology, clinical procedures, and laboratory management. Their educational programs aim to increase access to high-quality reproductive care and provide structured pathways for clinical providers.
BAIBYS is a rising technology firm that automates sperm selection using AI-based morphological and motility assessment, addressing the long-standing challenge that 96% of sperm in a healthy sample are abnormal. With AI and micro-robotics taking over the most labor-intensive steps, sperm selection becomes faster, more precise, and far less dependent on specialized personnel.
Training gaps, uneven skill development, and a shortage of structured pathways for embryologists and clinical providers affect access to, and quality of, fertility care. Stepping into this need, IVF Academy USA has opened as a dedicated training institution offering academically rigorous programs designed to elevate expertise across the lab, clinic, and business office. The academy is led by two long-established figures in reproductive medicine: Dr. Anthony Anderson, founder and CEO of IVF Academy USA a, and Dr. Paul Magarelli, who now serves as Dean of the Clinical School.
Dr. Magarelli’s appointment comes as he prepares to present new research at the upcoming American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) 2025 Scientific Congress & Expo in San Antonio. His abstract, Creating a Model Training Program for Certified Fertility Gynecologists Performing in the IVF Clinic: Interim Report, highlights the impact of training certified fertility gynecologists (CFGs) to expand access and improve clinic efficiency. The study demonstrated that incorporating CFGs into busy IVF practices led to an 18% increase in new patients seen and a 9% increase in assisted reproductive technology (ART) procedures performed. Importantly, the findings showed that clinical outcomes, including egg retrievals and embryo transfers, were non-inferior when performed by CFGs compared to board-certified reproductive endocrinologists.
The Biggest Thing That Happened To The IVF Lab Last Year
Still, the largest single development of IVF lab technology in 2025,--what founder of Avenues fertility clinic, Dr. Cristina Hickman, called “the biggest thing in IVF”--was a response to issues caused by the embryologist shortage and human variability.
In 2025, one of the largest IVF centers in Mexico City, Hope IVF, began performing IVF cycles using a fully automated IVF lab. Conceivable Life Sciences’ full-lab automation platform, AURA, was built to handle the vast majority of IVF lab functions — from cell handling to monitoring and data capture.
“I know that day one I'm going to have at least the same, if not even better, results than the ones that I had yesterday,” Dr. Alejandro Chavez-Badiola co-founder of Conceivable and Hope IVF told IRH. . “So expansion is easier in that sense”.
Kindbody’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Jason Barritt, has been one of the leading voices in defending embryologists’ needs.
“If it's a ten case day, and we ended up with four cases that had thirty or forty eggs each and then 10 cases that had ten (eggs) or less then that is very inefficient …you have to prioritize the use of time and equipment.” Barritt told IRH. Barritt described long-held observations by himself and other IVF Lab Directors, as being quantified in a research paper, written by Chavez-Badiola, Steve Rooks, Alan Murray, and Guiseppe Silvestri that showed massive disparities in the cost-of-goods-sold between IVF work orders.
Many device manufacturers have failed to sufficiently commit to solving clinics’ and labs’ main obstacles: quality assurance, workflow efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. AI-driven imaging systems reduce operator variability; lab leaders increasingly prioritize media vendors offering deep QC data; and networks expanding to satellite clinics evaluate automation platforms like AURA for their potential to deliver identical outcomes across multiple locations.
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