AI is a major breakthrough for fertility treatment
A JOURNALIST and documentary maker who suffered several miscarriages said artificial intelligence (AI) could completely transform women’s fertility struggles through ‘revolutionary’ new IVF techniques.
For some, the rapid development and adoption of AI over the past few years has fed fears that technological advances could be a danger to humanity.
But in the fertility sector, it’s doing the opposite.
New AI technologies will soon be able to analyse embryos in minute detail and rule out those with flaws, as well as better predict which pregnancies are at risk of disorders.
For journalist Anne-Marie Tomchak, AI could have prevented years of IVF treatment in the first place.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday as her RTÉ documentary, Game Changer: AI and You, aired this week, Ms Tomchak described the ‘amazing possibilities’ of harnessing the technology to aid fertility struggles.
Ms Tomchak experienced several miscarriages herself before eventually becoming pregnant with her daughter last year.
With new AI advancements in the field, she explained, those suffering with auto-immune diseases like her could be diagnosed before having to go through very emotionally painful pregnancy losses.
In the UK, where Ms Tomchak now lives, women can only be diagnosed with such conditions through the NHS after experiencing three or four recurrent miscarriages.
‘It’s such a shame that someone would have to go through that,’ she said.
Ms Tomchak described the introduction of AI into the reproductive space as a ‘long overdue transformation’.
She said: ‘We’ve relied very much on clinicians for so long, and their gut instinct and interpretation of all what they see in a scan.
‘Now with AI you can rely on artificial intelligence to be able to look at a scan of an embryo or of a video time lapse that they do when