Fertility Support and AI: Help or Hinderance

Discover how fertility apps impact patient care and nursing staff. Explore the balance between tech and human touch in complex fertility treatments.

There's an app for everything. From balancing your checkbook to checking out your stress levels to even doing your own EKG and all things fertility and in between, there is an app for that. We are currently in this microwave mentality and want information quickly without any context.

Our fertility patients are no different. Fertility patients are now more demanding because of the access to this information, knowing what treatment options are actually available to them, in addition to social media's well-scripted and very well-edited versions of celebrities going through their own fertility journey. But at the heart of it all, fertility treatment is very isolating.

Fertility treatment remains to be complex and continues to grow in complexity due to groundbreaking discoveries. Nursing staff continue to burn out because of these complexities and the demands of the patients. In an attempt to support nurses, practices are seeking ways to offset some of the emotional demands of patients.

Could an app be the answer? At the same time, could an app actually hurt the nursing staff? Could it actually increase the patient's dissatisfaction with their care in the fertility center? Could it actually create more work for the nurses? Patients wanting to do their own research often leads to nurses spending more time, wasteful time, having to teach patients to unlearn their own research instead of building trust in evidence-based practice and establishing workflows within the practice that were structured around risk and liability related to gamete care and embryo creation. Nothing can replace the warmth of actual interaction between the clinical staff and the patient in assessing the subjective information that patients are providing knowing they actually need just some emotional support. And AI cannot do that for patients.

Instead, take a look at your practice structure. What is your staffing model? Are nurses able to be able to work with patients and to provide them with the emotional support that they need? Are they handling administrative duties versus strict clinical care? Can you have a mental health professional on staff who will provide support to patients with their emotional needs? Do you also have great vetted patient education materials that they can feel empowered to utilize? A balance between online support and live patient support should be carefully considered. In an already alienating patient experience, no one wants to manage all of their care on their own through AI.

Patients are brave enough to enter our doors to seek our services to help them build their families and preserve their legacy. Be careful not to remove the human touch as part of this patient experience.