Success rates for couples trying to have a child via in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) could be improved courtesy of a growing number of clinics using artificial intelligence (AI).
One in six couples are affected by infertility, with 52,500 people using IVF in 2022.
But the results are not guaranteed and it can take several rounds to have a successful birth – costing would-be parents many thousands of pounds.
Now there’s hope both the odds and the experience of IVF could be improved; thanks to the small but growing number of clinics around the world using artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the process.
At the Avenues Clinic, by Euston station in north London, we’re shown around a lab that the medical director says “has AI integrated into all aspects of its techniques”.
Dr Jyoti Taneja says the AI software can tell which sperm, eggs and embryos are healthiest, to be selected for fertilisation and implantation.
As a patient’s sperm sample is surveyed by one of her embryologists, we see individual male gametes appear on the screen circled in green with little letters ‘A,’ ‘B,’ or ‘C.’ This is the AI – she explains – highlighting the ‘best grade’ sperm.
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Dr Taneja claims it can save her team hours of work, and will “lead to more successful and healthy outcomes, to minimise miscarriage and other abnormalities”.
After transferring her embryos to the clinic from another practice, mum-to-be Laura Farrell said they used their AI software to select which one to use. She’s now nine-and-a-half weeks pregnant.
For her, the AI use is “fantastic” and she thinks “women should be aware of that when they make their decision about which IVF clinic to go with because there are so many different choices out there”.
But she stresses the difficulties of accessing IVF – from the high cost to policies which bar certain people from accessing it on the NHS – mean there’s a long way to go.
“There is a lot of inequality and there is a lot of discrimination with regards to telling women they are not allowed NHS help even though they have confirmed infertility diagnosis purely on the basis they are a single female”.
Given the cost of a single round, she says if AI means “you can get first-time results, that’s fantastic”. But she said “I think the larger issue here is women being denied help in the first place based on really discriminatory factors, such as just being single”.
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Current success rates for IVF are low, and hugely varied by age. In 2022 just a third of women aged 34 and under had a successful birth from IVF when using their own eggs. That dropped to just 5% for women aged between 43 and 44.
It’s too soon to see how – or if – AI has improved the outcomes of women undergoing IVF in this way, but Avenues consultant Ali Al Chami says it’s streamlined the process – without taking over the medical decision-making:
“I look at AI in general as supporting decision making, because at the end of the day it’s our decision as doctors, as embryologists for the final selection of the embryo.
“But when we integrate the AI with the patient history and the treatments, it certainly improves things, and gives more clarity for the patients.”
It’s hoped that as the technology improves, so will the cost and outcomes for parents.
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Dr Ali Abbara is a leading consultant at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He thinks AI has huge potential to ‘transform’ IVF treatment by making it cheaper and more efficient.
But he urges caution, and the need for more data, in the technology’s ‘early days’.
“We need to prove a lot of these things before rolling them out, it’s fine to have a theory that it’s going to help but it’s important to demonstrate that and everything is optimised before we roll it out.”
