How can Artificial Intelligence help you get pregnant? A.I. Enabled Embryo Selection Now Available in India

Over the past few decades fertility rates have been declining with WHO recognizing Infertility as the third most common issue after Cancer and Heart Disease. According to the Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction (ISAR), one in six couples are battling with infertility in India and millions of people. This has resulted in millions of couples taking up various forms of fertility treatment, especially IVF.

Though IVF has improved leaps and bounds, success rates of 35-40% leave a lot to be desired. Low success rates mean multiple IVF cycles per patients which in turn increases costs. While there are many fertility centres offering treatment at reduced costs, multiple IVF cycles with recurrent medications lead to high expenditure for couples and this has been a cause for concern for countless couples across the country.  

Embryo assessment is one of the key factors contributing to a successful pregnancy. Embryo assessment is normally done by a skilled embryologist, who examines each embryo under a microscope and assigns it a grade. The grading enables your fertility centre to choose the embryo with the best chance of leading to a successful pregnancy. This visual assessment is limited to what can be seen with the naked eye down a microscope. Its reliability can also be impacted by unintentional human error or variables, such as tiredness or the need to quickly perform an assessment.

Deep learning for medical imaging is an A.l. technique that enables computers to recognize and classify images. The A.l. 'trains' on previous examples of those images in order to self-learn complex patterns and features relating to image type. Once trained, the A.l. can recognize and classify new, unseen images. Life Whisperer, A.I. driven embryo selection software has been presented with thousands of images of embryos that have been transferred, and their clinical pregnancy outcomes validated. From this, the A.l. has learnt to identify the morphological features of a viable and non-viable embryo - including those invisible to the human eye. Now this assistive technology provides additional evidence beyond the embryologist's visual grading to rank the most viable embryos.

GoHealthe, a company that offers turnkey solutions in assisted reproduction has partnered with Life Whisperer, the fertility arm of A.I. healthcare company Presagen, which operates out of Adelaide (South Australia) to provide A.I. powered embryo selection in India to improve IVF success rates and help millions achieve their dream of parenthood.

In a published international clinical study involving blind testing of 1,600 embryos Life Whisperer was shown to perform 25% better than highly experienced embryologists at identifying embryos with the highest chance of leading to a pregnancy. 

GoHealthe’s Director, Sharad Selvam  said, “At reasonable costs, this advanced A.I. technology eliminates stress for patients and will be an invaluable tool to fertility clinics helping them improve IVF success rates. There are no set-up costs and we have actually set up the software in a matter of minutes for our first fertility centre in Chennai and patients are already reaping the rewards of improved success rates.”

On using Life Whisperer, Dr. Vani Sundarapandian, Medical Director of Jananam Fertility Centre, Chennai said, “Life Whisperer is very reliable, needs no equipment and is non-invasive. It is a big step forward in fertility treatment and we have had amazing success and higher patient satisfaction using Life Whisperer”.

Predicting human embryo viability using advanced artificial intelligence is the next big step in IVF treatment as this technology provides higher success rates and standardisation of embryo assessment across fertility centres in the country.

Ask your fertility specialist if they have access to Life Whisperer and ensure you have the highest possible IVF success rates for your treatment. Visit www.lifewhisperer.com for more details.

Disclaimer: The views, suggestions and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Forbes India journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.