Dec 23, 2021 7:00 AM

Startups Are Trying to Drive Down the Cost of IVF

New techniques using artificial intelligence and automation can boost the odds of conception.

More than 300 million people worldwide suffer from some form of infertility. Many are opting for parenthood at a later stage in life – in their thirties and forties – when the quality of their gametes (the egg and sperm) is no longer at their biological prime. Recent studies also show that we are simply not as fertile as our grandparents. According to Shanna Shaw, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine, and author of the book Count Down, the average men’s sperm concentration – that is, the number of sperm per millilitre of semen – has decreased by more than 50 per cent in the past four decades, with the blame placed on factors such as environmental pollution and unhealthy lifestyles.

Increasingly, couples have been forced to resort to assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilisation, commonly known as IVF. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about nine million babies have been born using IVF since the first such case in 1978. It estimates that number will reach 200 million in 2100. In 2022, we will see the increased use of robotics and automation to meet that demand, while also improving the effectiveness of IVF for couples who are struggling to conceive.

Many of the protocols involved in an IVF procedure, from sperm analysis to embryo selection, are still conducted manually and without any regulatory oversight. IVF remains not only expensive (a full treatment typically costs up to £50,000) but also dismally ineffective, with a success rate of merely 25 per cent.

We are now seeing a new generation of startups dedicated to changing this with robotics and machine learning. San Francisco-based Alife Health, for instance, is using AI to study massive sets of historical data and eventually learn to identify the most viable treatment for couples undergoing IVF, improving chances of a successful pregnancy.

New York-based TMRW is automating IVF storage. It has built a robotic platform that automatically tags the vials used to store eggs and embryos with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips. They are then stored in liquid nitrogen tanks with sensors that constantly monitor variations of temperature and nitrogen.

Mojo, the startup I co-founded in 2017, has developed a smart microscope that uses AI to scan sperm samples and automatically count the number of sperm cells, and analyse their motility, morphology and DNA integrity. Independent clinical trials have shown that our technology has a 97 per cent agreement with the gold-standard analysis performed according to the WHO guidelines. The only difference is that our small robot can do in four minutes what it takes a skilled lab technician 30 minutes to do.

Ultimately, for many of these startups, including Mojo, the goal is to remove the human factor entirely, and replace IVF fertility clinics with an integrated lab of intelligent embryologist robots. In 2022, we will see the first-ever successful IVF procedure – from the gamete selection to egg fertilisation – carried out without human intervention The hope is that this AI embryologist will not only increase the probability of IVF success to about 75 per cent, it will also make the process faster, cheaper, safer and more accessible. With no humans involved, artificial fertility will no longer be a painful, heartbreaking and often financially costly experience, but instead a hopeful and humane one.

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