In-vitro is a complicated, expensive procedure that isn’t usually covered by insurance. So it would make sense that before the procedure is started, all interested parties have a good idea about the chance of success. The problem is that age is the main metric used to determine the chances of in-vitro success, and it’s not all that great; it has a high rate of false negatives. That may be changing–startup California company Univfy is presenting a new algorithm to the AMerican Society of Reproductive Medicine tomorrow that is 36% more accurate than age alone at determining fertility.
The best part of the new algorithm is that it comes in a home test version, so you don’t even have to go to a doctor to gain more information about your fertility and your options. The test is called PreIVF, and it costs $250–a small price compared to the thousands of dollars a failed in-vitro procedure can cost. It takes into account things like body type, history of smoking, blood and semen samples, and previous experiences with pregnancy to offer a more accurate test than a simple number. Univfy uses aggregated data from thousands of couples and passes these through a machine-learning algorithm to continually improve their accuracy. Since over 150,000 in-vitro cycles are performed each year, this is a huge breakthrough for a lot of people going through a difficult process.
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