Startups Are Trying to Drive Down the Cost of IVF

More than 300 million people worldwide suffer from some form of infertility. Many are opting for parenthood at a later stage in life – in their thirties and forties – when the quality of their gametes (the egg and sperm) is no longer at their biological prime. Recent studies also show that we are simply not as fertile as our grandparents. According to Shanna Shaw, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine, and author of the book Count Down, the average men's sperm concentration – that is, the number of sperm per millilitre of semen – has decreased by more than 50 per cent in the past four decades, with the blame placed on factors such as environmental pollution and unhealthy lifestyles. Increasingly, couples have been forced to resort to assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilisation, commonly known as IVF. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about nine million babies have been born using IVF since the first such case in 1978.