On 16th of December 2022, Ula Sankowska and Piotr Wygocki had the pleasure to participate in the annual meeting of Middle East Fertility Society in Abu Dhabi as expert panellists. In the panel, they shared their thoughts on efficiency, challenges and limitations of AI in reproductive medicine together with other experts in the field: Johnny Awwad, prof. Mohammed Aboulghar and Jared Robins.
4 key takeaways Ula and Piotr shared can be summed up as:
- Every year demand for IVF procedures rises about five to ten percent. However, thanks to personalised recommendations based on AI, clinicians can choose the most relevant and least cost-consuming diagnostic and treatment paths.
- Traditionally, embryo evaluation and selection has been a manual process, limiting patient access to treatment while also opening the door for human error. One of the key advantages that EMBRYOAID, the AI-driven embryo quality assessment tool we created, was designed to offer is accuracy and consistency in assessment.
- The main challenge we see when using AI in reproductive medicine is that we need to start running things in a different way, i.e., accept that AI can make better decisions than us. Although, it makes very different and surprising errors then we do. Such mistakes should be overseen by humans, but in general it brings “superpowers” to the playtable. No human can learn from millions of images, and AI can.
- Despite advancements in fertility treatments, IVF still only averages a 30% success rate per treatment cycle. Our vision of enhancing IVF outcomes and efficiency through digitization is slowly becoming reality. We believe that the transparency and user-centricity of our AI applications for IVF will significantly improve workflow efficiency, and data-driven decision-making for better IVF outcomes. This will make IVF more accessible to a larger population of people contending with infertility.
Thank you for having us!
