Although this treatment helps 500,000 babies to be born globally each year, many people who need IVF cannot access it due to financial or logistical barriers (
).
Efforts to Increase Access to Fertility Medicine
Overture Life hopes its technology will help increase access to fertility medicine, resulting in more babies born through IVF.
Advertising
Their engineers developed a sperm-injecting robot that was delivered to the New Hope Fertility Center in New York. The robot was reassembled and included a microscope, a mechanized needle, a small petri dish and a laptop.
Fertility Injector from Video Player
During the procedure, one of the engineers, who had no knowledge of productivity, used a Sony PlayStation 5 controller to position the robotic needle. After viewing a human egg with a camera, it proceeded on its own, releasing a single sperm cell that penetrated the egg.
According to the researchers, the procedures produced healthy embryos, and now two baby girls have been born, which they claim are the first humans to be born after insemination by a robot.
Infertility is defined by the World Health Organization as “a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by failure to achieve pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected intercourse.”
IVF is a medical breakthrough that helps infertile couples conceive and gives them the hope of becoming parents. The procedure involves several steps, including stimulation known as superovulation, egg retrieval, fertilization and fertilization, embryo culture, and embryo transfer.
Injecting sperm into a robot: Will infertility soon be a thing of the past?
Although the concept of a sperm-injecting robot was unusual, some fertility doctors were skeptical of its full potential. A doctor credited with developing the fertilization procedure known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI, in the 1990s told Overture researchers still require manual assistance for tasks such as loading a sperm cell into an injector needle (2).✔ ✔Reliable Source
Advances in intracytoplasmic sperm injection: historical perspectives
Go to source
).
“I don’t think it’s robotic ICSI yet,” he said. Nevertheless, the technology has promising implications for increasing access to fertility medicine and helping more people become parents through IVF.
References:
- In vitro fertilization – (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK562266/)
- Advances in intracytoplasmic sperm injection: historical perspectives – (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29046342/)
Source: Medium
