A medtech perspective: how can male fertility testing be improved?

There has been little innovation in the analysis of male fertility since the 1950s. Why? Tobias Boecker, Paris-based medtech entrepreneur is co-founder of Nanovare – a system that uses AI to help medical professionals to improve and speed up male fertility analysis – explores the current crisis in this field and what can be done to change things Birth rates are dropping, notably in the Western world. Between 1960 and 2015, the birth rate per woman in Germany decreased from 2.4 to 1.5, in the UK from 2.7 to 1.8 and in the US from 3.7 to 1.8. There are many external factors that influence this trend such as the increased age of marriage, the focus on professional careers, or the modernisation of social systems which eliminate parents' need to have many children to help support them in old age. Another factor that is becoming increasingly important is our own reproductive health, which depends on our lifestyle choices (eg smoking), environmental influences (eg pollution), and medical factors (eg genetic preconditions).