Couples who are making use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) to overcome or bypass life’s biologically derived pregnancy complications can now turn to a new app from Genea to monitor the first five days of the process. That’s because the company has now released an application called Grow by Genea, which allows parents to access time-lapse footage of their embryos at any time during those first days.The time-lapses themselves are created using images taken by Genea’s equipment at 5-minute intervals and can also be downloaded or shared by parents.
The entire idea behind Grow may seem downright Orwellian to some because of concerns related to privacy but representatives of Genea says it could potentially provide relief and peace of mind for those seeking to overcome life’s obstacles via IVF. According to one fertility specialist at the company, Dr. Tween Low, many women who have decided to undergo IVF face a range of uncertainties and have a lot of questions. For example, Low says she is frequently asked, “have my eggs fertilized? Have they made it to a day three embryo? How many do I get at the end of this?” The Grow app effectively answers some of those questions by giving patients the option to access the same images used by the company’s scientists. Through the app, parents can watch embryos developing from two cells to “16 cells and beyond.” Low says that the app actually came about as an extension of the tools already in use by those scientists, which allows observation without having to “take the embryo out and look at it under a microscope,” which significantly reduces risks to the embryos.
Unfortunately, Genea currently describes Grow as an “Australian first app.” So it appears that, for the time being, the company is focused on getting the technology right in its home regions first. However, it is available for both iOS and Android and, given the company’s claimed role in the birth of over 800,000 babies, the concepts could easily spread – serving as a kind of jumping off point for other medical technology companies around the world. As with most modern technological advances, particularly in medicine, there is bound to be some controversy surrounding the Grow app. With that said, anybody interested in checking out what the application or the ideas behind the app are all about can hit either the source link or the button below.
