News
Fairtility expands European market penetration, as clinics embrace breakthrough AI technology in IVF
One year following CE MDR clearance, Fairtility has emerged as the AI decision support platform of choice in European fertility practice
Fairtility, the transparent AI innovator powering IVF for improved outcomes, has announced it is expanding its geographic footprint across Europe.
One year since receiving CE MDR clearance for CHLOE EQ™, Fairtility has established a strong presence in countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Norway, in its mission to transform the IVF landscape.
“Clinics across Europe have embraced CHLOE EQ™, and they are seeing the disruptive capabilities of the platform, both in terms of embryo selection and providing patients the most advanced and transparent IVF experience available,” said Eran Eshed, CEO and Co-founder of Fairtility.
“These clinics are charting the path forward as AI progresses to become part of the standard of care across the IVF journey.”
With one in six people experiencing infertility in their reproductive years, the IVF market is growing. Fertility care providers must expand capacity by seeking opportunities to create workflow efficiencies both within and beyond the embryology lab.
CHLOE EQ™ represents a breakthrough in the IVF field, enabling clinics to reduce time spent on manual embryo annotation by an average of 33 per cent per cycle. This has resulted in a 30-50 per cent increase in IVF cycle capacity in clinics.
“Implementing AI technologies entering the IVF space challenges traditional norms and drives innovation forward for the entire industry,” said Suzanne Cawood, director of embryology, CRGH UK.
“AI tools like CHLOE EQ™ are necessary for improving the efficiency of IVF processes and increasing transparency. They are also the answer to IVF professional shortages and embryologist burnout resulting from the volume of administration associated with a single IVF cycle.
“Fairtility’s AI makes IVF more efficient and accessible to the growing population of people seeking fertility treatment.”
To thrive in the digital age, clinics must embrace a fully digital IVF journey that is streamlined and transparent for all stakeholders. Fairtility understands this imperative and is supporting clinics in achieving digital transformation for the IVF journey.
CHLOE EQ™ integrates with leading IVF EMR providers, enabling data to flow freely from lab-to-fertility specialist-to-patient, paving the path for more open communication on treatment plans and progress.
Shabana Sayed, senior embryologist and IVF lab manager at Klinikk Hausken, part of Medicover, said: “We selected CHLOE EQ because of its ability to provide quantifiable biological data on embryo development, quality and viability. This transparency and interpretability set it apart from other AI-based decision support tools available.
“Our embryologists see this system as a companion that helps augment and standardise decision making. It speaks to them in a language they understand –human biology.”
CHLOE EQ™ is the only commercial AI decision support platform able to quantify biomarkers throughout embryo development, automatically analysing established morphological and morphokinetic features, which are traditionally captured in a time-consuming and subjective manner.
Through translation of computational information to biologically relevant interpretation made ready for clinical decision making, CHLOE is the first and only transparent AI system able to automate analysis of the full spectrum of biological events related to embryo development.
“Together with our visionary partner clinics, we are reshaping the fertility landscape, addressing the urgent need for improved outcomes, and providing patients with the transparency and control they desire,” said Eshed.
Fairtility has implemented its transparent AI tool in 10 clinics, including:
- IVF London, UK
- Harley Street Fertility Clinic, UK
- The Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health (CRGH), UK, part of Future Life
- MEMORIAL IVF, Turkey
- Next Fertility Murcia at Tahe Medical Center, part of Next Clinics, Spain
- Tambre Fertility Clinic Madrid, Spain
- The Institute of Life – IASO, the leading Assisted Reproduction (IVF) Unit, Greece
- CRA Barcelona, Spain
- Klinikk Hausken, part of Medicover, Norway
- Instituto Bernabeu, Spain
An early PET scan after one cycle of chemotherapy may help predict how aggressive breast cancer responds to treatment, a study suggests.
Research led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London and King’s College London suggests that an early scan taken after one cycle of chemotherapy could help predict how well a patient’s cancer will respond to treatment.
The study focused on patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of the disease in which cancer cells lack receptors for the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, as well as the HER2 protein.
Patients with TNBC are usually treated with chemotherapy prior to surgery. While many respond well, residual disease at surgery, typically around six months later, is associated with a significantly poorer prognosis. Identifying people sooner who are unlikely to respond remains a major clinical challenge.
The research explored whether using PET imaging shortly after treatment begins, rather than relying only on MRI scans later in the treatment process, could provide earlier insight into how a patient’s cancer is responding. Twenty-two patients were recruited, with fourteen undergoing FDG-PET scans before treatment and after the first cycle of chemotherapy.
The findings, published in Clinical Cancer Research, showed that changes seen on PET scans after just one cycle of chemotherapy were strongly associated with subsequent response, including whether there was no detectable cancer, known as a complete response, by the end of treatment. Importantly, early PET response showed stronger associations with treatment outcomes than standard mid-treatment MRI scans in this study.
Being able to identify patients who are not responding well at an early stage could allow clinicians to adjust treatment sooner or consider alternative approaches. These findings may also support future strategies to better tailor treatment intensity to individual patients.
The study also compared two types of PET tracers, FDG and FLT, to determine which was most suitable. While both met the study’s technical criteria, FDG-PET was selected for further evaluation due to its better image quality, greater consistency and wider use in clinical practice.
The research also explored how imaging changes after just one cycle of chemotherapy relate to the body’s immune response to treatment. Biopsies taken before and after the first cycle of chemotherapy showed that an increase in immune cells within the tumour was strongly associated with both early PET changes and improved treatment outcomes.
The researchers emphasise that these findings now need to be validated in larger studies. Future work will aim to confirm these results in broader patient groups and explore more accessible imaging approaches, such as ultrasound, alongside PET and MRI.
Sheeba Irshad, professor of cancer immunology at King’s College London and lead of the Breast Cancer Now KCL Research Unit, said:
“In patients who had PET scans both before treatment and after the first cycle, we found that this early scan could predict whether they were likely to achieve a complete response by the end of treatment. These findings highlight the potential of early imaging to guide treatment decisions, and now need to be validated in larger, modern clinical trials.”
Andrew Tutt, professor of breast oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
“Research that helps us determine early who is already benefitting from standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy and who might benefit from clinical trials to find better treatments is vital. This study shows that FDG-PET may have great value in this regard. We hope to be able to design studies that further investigate and validate these findings.”
The study was supported by funding from King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Breast Cancer Now, Cancer Research UK, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity.
We are excited unveil the three finalists competing for one of the Femtech World Awards’ most coveted honours: the Startup of the Year Award, sponsored by Future Fertility.
This award celebrates an early-stage company making a bold impact in women’s health through innovation, vision and execution.
The winner will be announced at our virtual ceremony on 19 June, with the decision made by a representative from category sponsor Future Fertility.
Congratulations to the shortlist and thank you to everyone who entered or nominated.
Startup of the Year Shortlist
Hello Inside is the first women’s health AI company to turn daily metabolic signals into outcomes women feel and healthcare systems reimburse.
Women’s health has long been under-researched, and current AI benchmarks fail on women’s health questions roughly sixty percent of the time.
Hello Inside built the architecture to close that gap.
Across four years and 12,000+ validated metabolic profiles, three in four women improve at least one symptom within ninety days.
They lose four kilograms in three months, moving from overweight into the healthy range. In a clinical study with Alisa Vitti’s Flo Living, 91.9 per cent reduced PMS burden within sixty days.
U-Ploid is an early-stage biotechnology company tackling one of the most fundamental challenges in fertility care: the sharp, age-related decline in egg quality that limits outcomes across IVF and egg freezing.
While much of the field focuses on improving assessment and selection, U-Ploid is developing a first-in-class therapeutic approach designed to improve egg quality itself by addressing the biological causes of age-related chromosomal errors.
Supported by strong preclinical evidence and now advancing into human studies, U-Ploid combines scientific rigour, regulatory discipline and long-term vision to help redefine what is possible in fertility care.
Gestational diabetes is a strong risk factor for future type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal pre-pregnancy weight, according to a study at the University of Gothenburg.
The researchers call for earlier testing and better follow-up.
“Our results show that gestational diabetes functions as a kind of stress test for the body’s ability to manage blood sugar, and identifies women with a greatly increased risk of future type 2 diabetes”, said Jon Edqvist, PhD and affiliated to research at the University of Gothenburg, and operating room nurse at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Gestational diabetes is a special type of diabetes that can affect pregnant women.
The condition is defined as elevated blood sugar levels, without previously known diabetes. Treatment involves self-monitoring of blood sugar, advice on lifestyle habits and, if necessary, medication.
Identifying gestational diabetes is important because the disease increases the risk of complications such as preeclampsia, the need for a cesarean section and high birth weight for the baby.
Those who have had gestational diabetes are also at higher risk of later developing type 2 diabetes.
In the current study, published in eClinicalMedicine, researchers now show that gestational diabetes is a strong indicator of future risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal weight before pregnancy.
Elevated risk even with normal weight
The study is based on data from the Medical Birth Registry on just over 1.15 million first-time mothers in Sweden, who gave birth between 1987 and 2019. 16,870 women with confirmed gestational diabetes were compared with age-matched women without the diagnosis. The median follow-up period was nine years.
The results show that women with a BMI of 35 and above, i.e. severe obesity, had an almost tenfold increased risk of developing gestational diabetes compared to women with normal weight.
The risk of subsequent type 2 diabetes also increased with higher BMI, but it was significantly increased even with normal weight, which the researchers describe as particularly worrying.
More follow-up and more studies
The researchers behind the study welcome the recently updated recommendations on gestational diabetes in Sweden, where a higher proportion of pregnant women at increased risk are expected to be offered testing earlier in pregnancy, and if necessary, interventions.
“Diagnostics and care of gestational diabetes have looked very different in different parts of the country,” said Annika Rosengren, professor at the University of Gothenburg.
“There is a need for both improved follow-up after gestational diabetes, and more studies that investigate how such follow-up affects future health and prognosis”
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