Worldwide, over 150 million people live with infertility. The reasons for this include the high cost of IVF, the inability to access IVF close to home and, for some, the trauma they experience after a single or multiple failed IVF attempts.

This last point is a largely unaddressed problem. Some estimates suggest up to two-thirds of cycles don’t result in pregnancy, which is heartbreakingly low for all involved… Especially given each emotionally draining routine of hormone injections, ultrasounds, egg retrieval and one or more embryo transfers.

These high financial and emotional costs associated with doing each IVF cycle may be addressed by the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the IVF process.

True AI is able to learn from each new batch of inputs, exponentially improving its ability and accuracy over time. AI-assisted technologies like Life Whisperer, which has been ‘taught’ with over 20,000 images, could provide significant relief and increased certainty for would-be-parents. Life Whisperer’s deep learning AI provides non-invasive embryo assessment that is significantly more accurate than that of an expert embryologist. It also removes subjectivity from assessments and can assess morphological features invisible to the human eye.

At Life Whisperer, our aim is to help would-be-parents who are struggling with fertility to realise their dreams. If these new applications of AI can do that, while also bringing down the cost or number of IVF cycles for patients, it will be a wonderful result for everyone.