By Desiree Williams
It’s only been in use for a few months, but Univfy, a new in vitro fertilization technology, is already making a powerful impact on patients at Carmel’s Midwest Fertility Specialists, according to Dr. Robert Colver.
Univfy analyzes age, body mass index, ovarian quality, sperm function and count and previous diagnoses to generate a probability of conception through IVF that is specific to each patient.
“It’s pretty much revolutionary because beforehand we couldn’t do that,” Colver said. “Now, we can really give them a true number of what their likelihood is going to be to conceive.”
Colver said previous success rates were based solely on age, but now doctors can look more critically at a couple’s chance of conceiving with only a 1.5 percent error rate.
The Univfy report is created before an IVF cycle. It takes about one month to gather data from each patient. The information is put into an algorithm, one that Univfy experts develop specifically for each patient. The report produces a percentage of success for the first, second and third IVF cycles.
Midwest utilizes next-generation sequencing, which allows doctors to biopsy an embryo and examine 1.1 million data points to determine if the embryo is normal or abnormal before transferring it to the uterus. Colver said this decreases chances of surprise twins or triplets because doctors need to transfer only one normal embryo each cycle.
“The pregnancies are safer,” he said. “The mothers have a safer pregnancy. And importantly, the babies do so much better. Their likelihood of survival and well-being has significantly improved.”
Midwest also offers Access IVF, a refund program through Univfy. Instead of spending more than $20,000 for one cycle, patients can go through three IVF cycles and unlimited frozen IVF cycles for $23,500. If the treatment is unsuccessful, patients will an 80 percent, 50 percent or 30 percent refund based on their probability of conception through Univfy.
“I believe in my heart that we’re really able to help our patients in a way now that we weren’t able to before, from both a financial standpoint and an informational standpoint,” Colver said.
