This week, Dr. Tony Anderson joined Griffin Jones on the podcast to shed light on why there are so many embryologist openings and what you can do about it. He estimates that out of 420 clinics, there are 400 job listings for embryologists. Even if you do find one, how do you retain them? Dr. Anderson gives us strategies that you can implement now to help embryologists avoid burnout
More from this episode:
How to reduce embryologist burn-out
Why there is a huge demand for embryologists
How to attract and retain embryologists
Best way to train new embryologists
What younger embryologists look for in a work environment
Dr. Anderson’s Information:
LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-anderson-d-h-sc-eld-abb-8272a21b/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/embryodirector
Website: https://ivfacademyusa.com/
Mentioned in this episode:
Think Again by Adam Grant: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Again-Power-Knowing-What/dp/1984878107
Transcript
[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: Want more embryologists right now? Yeah. You and everybody else. So today I talk with someone who has a plan of getting more and retaining them. His name is Dr. Tony Anderson. He's the founder and director of a program called Embryo Director IVF Academy. Before we get into today's show, the shout out, goes to Dr. Isaac Glatstein in New Jersey who made the connection for this interview. There are topics that you think that I should cover. And people that you think are very qualified to cover them, that the business side of the fertility field should here, please make those intros. I don't always take them, but sometimes I do.
And this was a case that I did. So I hope Dr. Isaac Glatstein is doing really well in my interview with Dr. Anderson, we talk about ways of eliminating some things in the IVF lab, so that current embryology staff are less burned out. We talk about ways of recruiting them some of the low hanging fruit for training and then growth programs so that they stay with you.
And that it isn't just about money. And we do talk about some of the current wages and competition for them in the marketplace. So enjoy this interview on today's Inside Reproductive Health with Dr. Tony Anderson.
[00:01:54] Griffin Jones: Dr. Anderson, Tony, welcome to the inside reproductive.
[00:01:59] Tony Anderson: Thank you Griff. Delighted to be here and welcome to be here. Thank you.
[00:02:03] Griffin Jones: It was an REI mutual friend of ours that put us in contact. I was telling you before the show started that I tend to neglect the lab.
And you said that I often talk about a shortage of doctors and I do almost every episode and some, I very often forget to talk about the shortage of qualified embryologists and lab staff. And so that's something that you're working on. Why don't you first talk about what you see is the problem and then talk about what you're doing to solve it.
[00:02:32] Tony Anderson: Well, we've actually seen a large increase and the demand for IVF and fertility preservation of fertility genetics. I always use the example of, we've built our careers on the baby boomers coming through. That's where I built my career on. And today the gen X-ers millennials are the largest generation of the 20th century.
And all of these young people are coming of age and so there's higher demand. And with these young people coming up fertility age, we're not only just treating infertility. We're also preserving fertility. We're doing genetics and, there's a lot of at-home testing that we can do.
So the industry is just really growing. There's more demand for that.
[00:03:19] Griffin Jones: So when we talk about the demand, that's probably going to increase for some time. Why is there a shortage of embryologist to meet the demand? Why isn't the supply of embryologist grown with the demand?
[00:03:34] Tony Anderson: It's not a huge, huge career.
We're a very small group niche of people just like REI and fertility nurses. They're just a lot of nurses out there that in general. So we tend to recruit for nursing from other nursing departments, nursing careers, but when you get into nursing, it's, it's a whole new language that we speak. It could be a nurse for 30 years, come into fertility and it's a whole new career. Embryologists are a lot the same way. No one actually goes to school to be an embryologist. A lot of us are pre-vetted or pre-med or biology majors, and just bringing them into the careers, actually recruiting them as the hardest. And in my training program, I'm actually trying to recruit people to train and get them into the embryology career.
And a lot of people just don't know about it. And so going to the local universities, there's also a misconception to believe that you have to have a master's degree to become an embryologist. And that's not the case. You have to follow the regulatory guidelines. You have to have a minimum of a bachelor's degree and a science, a physical, chemical, biological sciences.
So I'm always trying to recruit these people into the industry and embryology, but if you could go back to the very first IVF baby Louise brown in 1978 .I always like to say we're like a band. You always have the doctor who is Patrick Steptoe. You always have the embryologist who is Bob Edwards, and you have a nurse that was Jean Purdy.
You could just search Louise Brown in anything and you'll come up with those three people. And I always like to say, when you have fertility care fertility treatment, you have to have, the band is like, you gotta have a guitar player, but without the the bass player, the drummer.
It's really not a band. And so you really have to have those three people and, , working with medical practices, there's always the the control tower or the people running the front desk that are regulating the flow. So, it takes the whole group to put it together.
But my focus has really been working on embryology, recruiting them, training them. And I go through a three month training program to get them into the embryology and then help them find jobs. So that's what I'm trying to do, where there's a demand for it and to feel bad.
[00:05:48] Griffin Jones: Who are we losing people to when there are people that could be great embryologists and they're out there pointing their career, when they're pursuing that or another scientific endeavor in the case of REI, we might be losing other REI to other subspecialties.
Maybe they're going into MFM, or maybe we're losing them a little bit earlier and they're not sub-specializing at all. Or maybe we're losing even some of them a little bit earlier than that. And they're choosing a different line of medicine then obstetrics and gynecology. So what are the other areas?
And I never asked this to Bill Venier or Shaun Reed or any of the people that came on to talk about lab needs in the past. Who are we losing people to?
[00:06:31] Tony Anderson: It's not so much losing people. If you take the example of the REI. REI has only have so many fellowships a year per year. And so there's probably more demand for REI, then are actually going into the fellowship. And so OB GYN is go through residency. They want to get into a fellowship and some get accepted. Some do not. And, because of that, the demand there, maybe they need to expand that for awhile to meet the demand when I mentioned that we're treating the, this largest generation of our lives. Then, maybe we need to meet that demand now, but then maybe cut it back later, if the demand goes down. Embryologist there's not like a fellowship or residency, and that's kind of what I'm trying to create here. Rather than you don't have to go get a master's degree, it's just bringing them into it. A lot of people graduate. I mean, I've recruited people with biology degrees and they end up, they're working in cake shops and bakeries and lawyer, working in illegal offices, not because that's what they want teach them, they can go out and do something that they really went to college to do originally.
[00:07:38] Griffin Jones: I want to talk about more, how you're recruiting them. You mentioned that there is no fellowship for embryology, and I believe that one of the biggest bottlenecks on the REI side is the. The fellowship and the fact that there's only 44, we're only making 44 new fertility doctors a year.
Could we be making a hundred or 200 that's for someone else to say, but it is part of the bottleneck. So without that accreditation bottleneck, what is the bottleneck for embryologists?
[00:08:11] Tony Anderson: Really just getting experienced, one of the things that I see happening in the industry today is people, every lab, every there's 420 labs in the country, and there's probably 400 job openings right now.
And so if you have a lab,
[00:08:28] Griffin Jones: Repeat that for me, the listener will have gotten it, but I want to make sure that I got to repeat that, please.
[00:08:33] Tony Anderson: Well, there's, I believe there is around 420 lab laboratories in the country that report to SART. And I would say that there's probably 400 job openings right now. And so if you are going to another center to recruit from that center, there's still a zero net gain in that community.
And so we're really robbing from Peter to paypal and, we're not doing any of the community, a service or justice that way.
[00:09:00] Griffin Jones: Is that 400 an estimate? That 400 job openings is an estimate Tony, how do that?
[00:09:05] Tony Anderson: Just about every lab out there is recruiting and I mean, I'm doing some work where, like you mentioned bill and Debbie out in California, like we're working with ovations and the preludes and, helping recruit people for those centers too, because there's such a demand in them. And if someone is leaving one program to go another to another. Just a continual opening for four positions. I dunno if the ad 400 is an accurate position.
I personally when I'm looking for somebody, I tend not to advertise those jobs because , you want to, look for qualified candidates. And I actually, the last four people I've hired, I've actually hired off of indeed. And until recently I've never hired anybody off of indeed usually I, people will come to me wanting to be trained and, and I will work with them. And that's how I'm actually recruiting. A lot of my, my students were, through Glassdoor and indeed. And , sharing what I have to offer. And what's really funny is that a lot of feedback I get is because I offer an ISA and income sharing agreement where students don't pay anything for their training.
And I offer that because I am confident enough in my skills and that I can train them and get them a position that I I'm willing to take that risk. And then once they get into their job, I work with a percentage of their income until the tuition is paid back.
[00:10:33] Griffin Jones: A different higher Ed would be if that were model universally adopted.
[00:10:39] Tony Anderson: Yeah, what undergraduate degree offers that are master's or doctorate degree offers that. And so that's what I'm doing. And when I get a feedback with that is that is too good to be true, like who would do that? But I just know there's enough demand.
And I've been doing this for 30 years that I I'm confident that I can get them a job if they're willing to be moved. I live here in San Antonio. It's where my lab is, there's only like four labs in San Antonio. So if you want to be in San Antonio, that really limits what I can do.
But if you're willing to go anywhere in the country, there's no doubt in my mind that anybody who comes through will have a job when they're done.
[00:11:17] Griffin Jones: So talk to us about what you were doing before and then how you decided. You knew that there was a demand, but how did you decide that you could meet this market need for training more embryologist?
What were you doing before? And then what was it that got you to leave your day job?
[00:11:35] Tony Anderson: Yeah, we all, just like anybody, when I left my undergraduate looking for a job. I ended up cloning cows working in the bovine industry early in my career. A lot of us from the bovine world were recruited into the human world.
And worked with some really great people in my career work with Klaus Wiemer, Jacques Cohen, Santiago Munne. Like I had some great mentors along the way. And I always had this euphoric dream that I was going to train my group of people. And I would retire with that group of people.
And over time, as I felt like I was constantly training people. I ended up doing my masters at Leeds University, distance learning program. And my doctorate degree was at Nova Southeastern where, one of our projects we had to do, we actually had to create an educational program. We had to create our own class. And through that, I thought, why not create this, training program through this? And so I started putting it together and just kind of experimented with a few people, not really knowing if it was going to do anything. And I ended up training a few people for free and getting them jobs and they are doing really well in their career. And I actually, one of the my medical director at the time Francisco Ardando, he's like you actually are really good at training people that actually putting it in terms that people understand and not trying to make it sound all flowery and fluffy.
And so, I just started doing it and put it together and put together the program started marketing it and it was really kind of funny. It's kinda like, I thought, well, my reputation, if , people will come, I'll build a website, they'll come. They didn't come. And really that's when I started kind of doing my, booths at the shows and people start realizing that this is a real deal.
And so it was actually training program of the kind in the United States. And I believe there's a couple more, you mentioned bill out in California and bill and Debbie, but yeah, so we just built it up. And in this year I decided to go out full-time on my own and doing this whole time.
[00:13:42] Griffin Jones: So tell me about those booths. Where are you recruiting people from? How are you finding people? Because as you mentioned, a lot of people don't even know that this is a potential career path.
[00:13:53] Tony Anderson: Yeah, well, I mean, really honestly, it's really kind of getting the trust from my peers. I've been working in the field, so it's a very small field.
We tend to all know each other and basically, there's two types of people like there's people currently in labs and IVF labs. Like I have two people coming in next week. They, are coming in from New York. To train for five days. Those are short-term courses so the, the booths are really that I recently started doing the long-term courses, the three month courses, this past year. And I'm recruiting those. A lot of those people from going to the schools, going to universities, collaborating with some of the bio biology departments and really kind of recruiting from indeed as well, to bring those people in and train them from scratch to nobody from zero to hero.
[00:14:42] Griffin Jones: So the short term courses are people who are working in labs right now. It's IVF centers are sending those folks too. And the three month longer-term courses are for making new embryologists.
[00:14:54] Tony Anderson: Yeah. The real low hanging fruit for in the centers right now. If somebody wants to, they're short and the embryo lab, like you can train somebody pretty quickly into andrology usually around just, I usually I call my andrology course a five day course, you can do basic semen analysis count motility, morphologies, and then you could do the IVF, perhaps IOI, perhaps usually within five days, you can do that, but it's going to take quite a bit more time for the embryology piece. So a lot of those, a lot of these labs, I think one of the real criminal things that we do to some of our teams is we have somebody in andrology that they've been there for nine years and they are hunger for an opp opportunity to get into embryology and then they don't. So bring those people into embryology. You can always recruit people into andrology and let that kind of feeding your embryo lab. They learn the quality control. They learn how to keep things organized and manage it. And if you make a mistake with sperm, you can always go back and get another sperm sample.
Do you make a mistake with an embryo? You can't go back and make another embryos. So, I always say that the andrology lab is a great way to recruit people into embryology and let me help you get them to competency faster. The real talk real struggle is that is the labs are really so short staffed that they can't find the time to train them.
[00:16:22] Griffin Jones: So let's talk a little bit about that because their so short-staffed, there's a lot of burnout happening in the lab and there's someone on social media. We both likely know that I'm trying to get on the podcast. I won't mention this individual's name because they're not ready to talk about it on the podcast, but on social media frequently talking about burnout for lab staff.
And on one hand, of course, they're being asked to do so much. On the other hand, I don't know what the alternative is. There's that many people that need IVF cycles. And, and so can you talk a little bit more about the burnout and the busy-ness and how do we solve for this at a long-term bigger picture issue, if we're too busy to do anything but cycling right now?
[00:17:09] Tony Anderson: Yeah. Well, one of the things that we also have to recognize too, is who are our employees? Who are these, we're, they're not people like, I mean, I don't want to like in the generational piece, but, people don't always work for money just because you're going to pay him more money.
Doesn't mean that they're going to want to work more for you. And so people, I like a lot of the people we're recruiting the gen Z, gen Y. They would rather make less money and have better quality of life. And, I gotta say like, maybe they have more right than I did. And so when we talk about burnout, one there's just such a demand, I keep hearing these stories about embryologist, making sure demands of like really huge salaries and working seven to three and not going to work a minute more after that, but just saying, it's kind of odd. You can't do that in embryology, you can't go home to the work's done, if you work in a business office, if the work's not done, you can always pick it up tomorrow where you left off, you can't do that in biology. So we tend not to work, regular hours, regular weekends, and then that's where the burnout comes. Cause it's a 365 day a year. And it sounds kind of crazy. A lot of times when someone comes to me, it sounds like I'm trying to talk them out of embryology because it is. There's probably only one industry that demands more of you than an embryologist. And that's the dairy industry because in the dairy industry, cows need to be milked twice a day, no matter what it doesn't stop. And embryology is a lot the same way. One retrieval a week requires seven days worth of work.
And if you freeze embryos, those embryos never go home. You're caring for them every day, the Cryotanks.
[00:18:51] Griffin Jones: So is there anything else we can do except I guess, invest in training programs like yours. Is there anything else to do though when the demand is so high, it's like I get that you want to work weekends and we'd love to offer you more time off, but or have you do less cycles in the course of a week. But we are beyond, we've got a two month wait list for our new patients. And we're trying to cycle as many people as we can.
[00:19:17] Tony Anderson: That's a great point. And actually there's a book that I recently read. It's called Think Again by Adam Grant.
It's a spectacular book and I think any embryologist medical director, really anybody in any walk of life will get something out of this. And the idea is that just because we've been doing it one way, all of our careers and all of our lives doesn't mean we shouldn't rethink some of those things.
And I'll use an example of, some of the things that, when I first got into embryology, it was very simple. We did retrieval. We fertilized, we transfer, the next day, like literally two days later pregnancy rates were terrible, but as we did more, we added oil culture. We added ICSI, we added genetic testing.
So it's gotten progressively harder and harder over the years. And the way we were able to do more. With less people, as we stopped making our media, we stopped making micro tools. We stopped doing some of the day two assessments, the day four assessments. So maybe there's still some things that we can do, and this is going to be out there in left field.
And some of my peers might think. But maybe we could get away with not doing fert checks because we're doing genomic testing on every single case almost. So if we're not doing the fertilization checks, then, we're doing the genomics. We're going to know if the genetics is okay before we transfer it and I know a lot of programs are stopping the day three assessments. And so with the day three assessments, it doesn't really matter. Most of us are going to the blastocyst and I always say that if you're going to do a day three assessment, it's kind of like trying to pick the winner of a horse race, on the back turn kind of thing.
So if you're going to the blastocyst, the only way to really know anything is to look at the day that you're going to at the finish line. And one of the things that I'm actually encouraging, some of the labs I'm working in is getting some of these embryo imaging, incubators, where we can look at some of them along the way.
Maybe not have to bring them out and just look at them at time when we have the time and hiring people to outsource things that we're not doing, like data entry, emailing the patients, embryologists do a lot. I always say it's about 60% bench time, 40% admin time. You could increase their bandwidth if you took that 40% admin time away and let allow them to work doing what they were doing, but they'd best at.
[00:21:43] Griffin Jones: Well, whenever anyone is at capacity with anything. The first thing to do is eliminate anything that's possible. You've given us a couple ideas then automate and then delegate or outsource, and even as like a couple of ideas for that. So that might be able to help some folks with burnout temporarily. I want to go back to something you said, because I want to see if you think it's true when you're talking to these new candidates, when you said a lot of the millennial and gen Z are willing to make less money in order to have more time, I hear it all the time. Tony, I had see it in some HR statistics and stuff. I'm skeptical that it's true. I think they want that. I think they want the time that the older generations didn't have and they want the money and they want it.
That's what I'm seeing when I hire, especially I know the last year or so has been a fluke in the entire job market or a riff, you might say I'm not convinced that it's ever going back to normal. Even if we see a recession, I know things will, sometimes they admin in the favor of employees. Sometimes in the favor of employers, but I really think that this could be the new normal, where six figures is the basement for anything like being a manager at a retail store and anything. And, and they want to work 30 or 40 hours a week tops. And that drives up the real, the market for, for highly skilled labor, like embryology.
And so what are you seeing, when you're seeing these younger folks start to take positions?
[00:23:19] Tony Anderson: Well, I agree with you can't hire somebody at a base salary and I don't, I've never operated this way. You can't hire somebody at a base salary and expect a 3% a year that, I always use the magical 10,000 hours after you've worked 10,000 hours.
You should be a master of your trade. And so, when you're training with me, I'm going to give you like 400 hours, during that three month timeframe, but you're not going to be an expert till you've done a good solid five years of what you do. I can fully train, I've actually just recently published as submitted a paper for publication on the training and how well it works. But at the end of the day, when you hire somebody, you have to be willing to give them five and $10,000 raise that raises for that first year to get them to where they're at, you have to pay them fairly. And that's where, if you hire someone who's going to use a random number like if you hire someone for $50,000 , straight out of school with some training the program or 60,000, that in five years, you probably need to be up there in that, six figure salary. If you're still paying them 55,000 or 60,000, or even 65,000, they're going to go somewhere else.
So you have to pay them fairly enough. And then also give them, I think with a lot of the younger people, they don't want to be micromanaged. So in some ways I agree you can't. Just let them work from eight to four or eight to three and pay them six figures. But the goal is that, if you think you can get to that point, then they probably will.
When I'm recruiting people, I have a coffee talk with them and just like I'm having, what do you want your base salary? Where do you think you'll be in five years? What what's gonna make you happy? And if you're not, if I can't make those expectations, then I don't want to recruit them into the program.
I actually had worked with the EVMS program for awhile while I was teaching them. And I had one of the students come out and say like, they expected their base, their first salary to be $80,000. And I said, I got some good news. I got some bad news. Sunday you'll make 80,000, but it's not going to be your first salary out of school.
It's you have to work up to that and they if you make a plan for them in the beginning or where they're going to be and where they're going to be in five years and you'll have some loyalty and commitment and not have to make them sign non-compete contracts, I never had anybody have to do that.
My goal is to support them along the way and be there as a director, I also offsite direct labs and that's how I recruit people in here's your growth plan for the next five years? The real challenge is after five years, what are you going to do? That's been my real challenge is after five years and you're not learning as much.
You're not building those skills. And now you have to kind of really drill down as a person, that person that you have hired, how are they going to get better? And at that point, maybe they should consider master's degrees and doctorate degrees to maybe grow in the supervisory level and lab director level.
[00:26:21] Griffin Jones: So is that sustainable though, at a time when people can constantly one up the other with salary, I guess. So even if you were so money motivated you maybe want a greater work-life balance, but okay. I'm either going to be working the same or they're both going to work me like a dog anyway. And all of a sudden this other person across the street is offering me 25% more than I'm making now because their need is that bad.
And they need it now, I guess. How do you maintain loyalty?
[00:26:57] Tony Anderson: Well, I would say that a lot of these people that are jumping from one place to another, to another, that if I saw a resume that did that. I wouldn't be real hesitant to hire that person.
[00:27:07] Griffin Jones: If you're so desperate, Tony, like I think some, somebody still might pick up Antonio brown next year for all the football fans that understand that they still might do it.
Even though that is a fire of a resume, but some buddy might be desperate enough to do it. And, and when there is such high demand, I think people will look well, eight months here, a year and a half here. I still see people getting hired like that.
[00:27:33] Tony Anderson: Yeah, honestly, I actually know people recruiting people that way too.
And I really actually hate to see that recruiting from other centers, you get a bad reputation as a lab director and an organization when you do that. And you have to be real cautious about if you're the one leaving and because I have had peers that they jumped from one program to another, to another, and some large cities you can get away with that San Antonio, you can't because if, unless you want to leave to another city but , say like if you're in New York, if you jump from program to program, you can do that for awhile.
But after awhile, what are you going to do it? And even if they do offer you more money, are you really worth that amount of money? And just because you have a desire to do that. And there's another thing that I also always say, if you don't like where you're at, because of personalities or something like that, then wherever you go, that's where you'll be.
I have another way of putting it, the reason why the grass is greener on the other side is cause it's covered. Cause it's covered in crap. When you get over there, it's the same crap that you're sitting in. So just because you're moving and jumping around from program to program, doesn't mean you're actually worth it or things are going to be better when you get there.
[00:28:45] Griffin Jones: Well, let's talk a little bit about other ways of motivating in keeping embryologist to justify training them because I'm not totally satisfied with the wage prior to my friend, Dr. Eduardo Harrison is listening. He and I had a debate about well, the cost of fertility treatment go up or down.
And in the next five years, I still see it going up. And one of the reasons is I think that the salaries that you mentioned for recruiting people into the field are, are too low. I th when I hear that compared to what I pay my people, and we're a marketing firm, for example, it's like why there's so many other places everywhere across the workforce.
And maybe that will like I said, maybe it will add back to the other way to employers, but it sounds to me, like there might be too much competition that even if somebody isn't money motivated, it's like, wow. Like if I could do this for 30% more, 20% more I think that's a hard thing to overcome, but lets you and I are in solving for that today. One other thing that I want to think about is how do you keep people engaged in a way that justifies investing in them? I wonder if embryology is too boring for some gen Z folks or for some millennials. And the example that I have is I was talking with a junior embryologist who was applying for a position with us.
And I think that they're doing pretty well for themselves and they're in a very busy area. But they wanted to get out of the lab itself. They wanted to stay in fertility. They wanted to work like in a biz dev role in fertility. So if there are lab companies, give me a call, connect you with this person.
But I think that they just didn't want to stand on their feet all day or sit in a chair and be in a lab. All day and this person could, could accelerate a lot more in, in their career and be, and do really well. But they weren't interested. And so how do we either screen for that or help people grow that they actually want to stay?
[00:30:48] Tony Anderson: Yeah, that's those are you bring up some really good points and there's a couple of things that came to mind while asking the question, kind of going back to, people in embryology, one of my challenges was, because it's not cheap, to have an embryo training lab, like I have to have the exact same amount of equipment that an IVF lab would have even more. Because if I want to train more than one student, I have to have multiple micro stations at a a hundred thousand dollars a piece, microscopes. I have to have all of that stuff, liquid nitrogen and embryos. It's very expensive to operate, so it's not cheap to train someone.
And so one of the things I would say, when you talk about cost is not going to go down, but if you're a medical director and you are wanting to invest in your people, when you invest in your people, that means you have a faith in them. You want to keep them there and that's how you're going to keep them engaged, keeping them going to meetings and, investing in them, not just treating them like the carrot in front of the pony and taking them along. But let's just say, if you were to go put $5,000 into training somebody, an Axiom biopsy course now when they come back, when they do for ICSI, or four biopsies. Now you've made your money back every biopsy and ICSI after that, they're going to keep making you money. That investment is going to make you hundreds of thousands percent versus, if you were to put $5,000 in the stock market you might make, if you made 10%, you're going to make $500 a year.
But if you invest in one training course, as you know, two training courses that say $5,000 all year long, every time they do a Biopsy for you, it's making you money. It's the best investment of fertility center can make in their people right now and showing them that they believe in them and showing them that they're going to continue to invest in them and their growth and in hiring people that to, to to help them have this quality of life and, and and to grow in their careers.
[00:32:55] Griffin Jones: How's AI going to change the work flow that we've talked about in the lab on the clinic side. I've talked about with Dr. Bob Stillman about the possibility of like minority report with the huge screen.
And REI is managing hundreds of cases at once using AI. What is it going to be like in the lab in the next decade do you suppose?
[00:33:20] Tony Anderson: Oh, well, AI is going to, a lot of people are afraid of AI and a lot of people are afraid of the robotics and a IVF in a box that is going to take our jobs away.
I think it's going to simplify our work and we're, increase our bandwidth to do more. We won't have to manually do the assessments. Everything will be done by the machine, through like Embryoscopes or, MIRI, embryo imaging type incubators. And historically those incubators haven't been shown to make any clinical improvements, but if you can save a safety and time, then those types of pieces will be good.
And people are been able to overlay big data. That'll help you select the best embryo. People like me, who've been looking at embryos for 30 years. We can look at an embryo, back one of my prize, paper nominations. I had a few years ago that I could select an embryo and have just as good a pregnancy rate as a PGT embryo.
And just knowing how the embryo grows. Well, maybe some of the young folks won't have to learn all of those things and that actually make their training go faster. So AI is actually going to be a tool to help us do more with less people. And that's where I see it going and I think we should embrace that.
I think we should embrace the idea of having witnessing systems and bring those into the laboratories to increase safety.
[00:34:40] Griffin Jones: How close are we to some of that? How close are we to AI doing the assessments, for example, and I wait two or three years away from that, do you think it's not on the horizon and you have no way of knowing.
[00:34:52] Tony Anderson: No, it's there now Embryoscope will actually do that now, in there even actually overlaying AI on the genomics testing to take the human variability is out of it. One of the things that is going to make it more expensive because an Embryoscope is a $180,000.
A Casa, computerized assistance semen analysis system is anywhere between 40 and $80,000. If you have a witnessing system it's gonna cost you probably another 50 to $60,000 a year, depending on how large your program is. And so you have to put that cost onto the patient, unfortunately, but with that, the systems, well, if they would all work together that's one of the problems is that, , one company has this system and other company has this system. If they all talked to the EMR, then they would actually be a very powerful system. And so that, really any EMR, if you could get the data to automatically upload into the EMR just like we do with lab core we send a blood to lab core.
All that data automatically goes into the EMR. If we could get our incubators and witnessing systems to do that for us, it would really make life a lot safer and simpler for the laboratory team. We spend a lot of time. It takes a lot of resources to make sure you get it right every time. I always say it's like, when you're going to land on an airplane, a pilot comes in at the runway and if he or she, doesn't feel comfortable with the runway, you can always come back up and come around and do make another attempt at it.
When you're an embryologist, you get one shot at it. Every single time you have to hit that runway every single time. And so these systems are going to actually make our lives better. But it's going to make an investment. Casa systems have been around for 30 years, but you'll find very few in the laboratories because they are very expensive and most docs will be like, well, I can pay that person $30,000 a year versus buying the system for 80,000.
[00:36:51] Griffin Jones: Well now maybe they can't. So maybe that's the tipping point for some of this. So Tony, most of our audience is practice owners or execs for other companies in the fertility field. How would you like to conclude today's topic?
[00:37:04] Tony Anderson: Well, it's been a pleasure to be here and I appreciate the invite to come and just hope that working, collaborating with the people that are recruiting and seeking embryologist to help them to bridge that gap and to fill that those areas that they need.
[00:37:21] Griffin Jones: Where can people find you? Where can people find you? And we'll also link it in the show notes.
[00:37:25] Tony Anderson: My website is https://ivfacademyusa.com/. And my email is dranderson@embryodirector.com.
[00:37:37] Griffin Jones: Dr. Tony Anderson. Thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health.
[00:37:41] Tony Anderson: Thank you Griff. I appreciate you.