Fertility and Sterility On Air - ASRM INNOVATE

Fertility & Sterility on Air discusses ASRM INNOVATE, a reproductive health innovation summit that brings together dynamic healthcare professionals, thought leaders, and innovators to forge advancements in reproductive medicine through the synergy of science and technology. Join our host Kate Devine with Jared Robins, Anuja Dokras, and David Sable as they talk about formulating and executing the inaugural ASRM INNOVATE conference dedicated to identifying and addressing gaps and lack of innovation within the field of reproductive medicine by cultivating deliberate collaboration and exchange of ideas between healthcare professionals, innovators, and investors.

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Welcome to Fertility and Sterility On Air, the podcast where you can stay current on the latest global research in the field of reproductive medicine. This podcast brings you an overview of this month's journal, in-depth discussions with authors and other special features. F&S On Air is brought to you by the Fertility and Sterility family of journals, in conjunction with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and is hosted by Dr. Kurt Barnhart, Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Eve Feinberg, Editorial Editor, Dr. Micah Hill, Media Editor, Dr. Pietro Bortoletto, Interactive Associate-in-Chief, and Associate Editor, Dr. Kate Devine.

Hello, Fertility and Sterility On Air audience. Thank you for joining us for this special mini episode of Fertility and Sterility On Air. I'm thrilled to be here with our CEO of ASRM, Dr. Jared Robins, as well as with my esteemed colleagues, Dr. Anuja Dokras and Dr. David Sable.

And we're all here to talk about what was an incredibly invigorating event, I think, that took place for the first time this year, the inaugural year of ASRM Innovate. So welcome, everyone. Thanks so much for being here today.

Thanks for putting this together, Kate. I'm really excited to talk about Innovate. Yeah.

And I'm really excited to talk about it as well and to participate again next year. It was really, I think, a huge addition to the Scientific Congress, which is always an amazing networking opportunity. But this was really a kind of a different and exciting new flavor.

So just to kind of update those of you in the audience who weren't aware of Innovate, this was a meeting that took place, as I said, after the Scientific Congress and was an opportunity for us all to collaborate on really projects, innovations, new inventions, really anything that's new and exciting in our field. And it brought together not just the science, although science is part of it, but also, you know, the founders, the funders, and the end users of these technologies, which is, you know, us, the clinicians. And some of us have our fingers in multiple pots among those things on this call.

So that's why I think it's a good group to talk about what was exciting about Innovate and what we all learned and enjoyed about it. So, Jared, I think this was really your brainchild and probably something that you've been considering doing for some time. Why were you passionate that ASRM should have its own Innovation Summit, with there being a couple of other ones out there at this point? And why did you think it should be associated with the flagship ASRM Scientific Congress? So I've participated in a number of innovation programs, really across the House of Medicine for years.

And I advised several startup companies in those early stages of development. And what I've observed during this time period is that a lot of the founders of med tech companies are engineers and MBAs that have really great ideas and are really brilliant in their own right, but their ideas really stem from their personal interactions with the medical community and have no real direct connection to the medical community. I've also observed that a lot of health care providers have really great ideas about the pain points that they experience every day in the clinic and ways in which to develop innovations around those pain points, but really don't have the knowledge or the means to act on developing these innovations into ways in which to really improve their clinical experience.

And so when you attend these innovation summits, they're very founder focused and they really don't bring together these communities. So I felt like it was really important for ASRM to develop an innovation program that would have the unique value proposition of bringing together founders and funders and the health care community, people with health care providers that have a interest in entrepreneurship, really to begin that idea of working together and networking. So from this concept, ASRM Innovate was born and we put together a terrific task force of physician innovators that were able to really develop an amazing program.

And as you described, Kate, I really felt like it was an invigorating event. At the meeting, we also are trying to bring more startup companies to the ASRM meeting as well. At the ASRM meeting this year, we had for the second year a space within our exhibit hall that we called New Horizons.

And in that space, we had startup companies have smaller booths. It was less expensive, but it gave startup companies an opportunity to interact with the ASRM membership that was attending the meeting. And so since we had the founders present, we were able to bring funders to the meeting.

We felt like by incorporating with this meeting, it just enhanced the networking that would actually happen at the meeting as well. And so we were really excited to tack this on to the ASRM meeting and provide this new networking opportunity to really help drive innovation within our field that is just so important and continuing to push the field forward. Yeah, I couldn't agree more that it's so important that some of these innovators who have incredible ideas, incredible intellect, incredible skill sets, but might not really understand the pain points that patients and clinicians have to get feedback and to make those connections.

And I think it was John Petrozza who coined a phrase that the Innovation Summit was really a master class in connection and curiosity. So I love that phrase. I think it was true to form in my session.

There were, you know, multiple founders of startups that stood up and said, I can't get on any of your calendars. You won't talk to me until I have more data, but I can't make more data until I understand what you need, until I have a connection to you and your patients to generate that data. So it is a real block that a lot of innovators face in terms of a frustration.

So I'll turn it over to you, Jared, to kind of talk to David and Anuja about what they got out of this session, what they brought to the session and what was exciting for them. Yeah, and just to tack on to what you just said, I think that's so important for us as healthcare providers to think about as well, because I get a lot of phone calls from new startup companies saying, you know, I've got this product. Can you tell me what you think about its clinical applicability? And one of the questions I always ask is, who's your scientific advisory board? And they're like, you know, so many of those founders are telling me that I'm the first doctor that they're speaking to for this sort of mature product.

And it's so important to involve the healthcare providers, whether they're physicians or nurses or embryologists, depending on the technology from the start up, because otherwise they're developing these products that are to fix the pain point that they think exists, but may or may not actually exist. And that may not be really relevant until the clinic. So by getting healthcare providers involved early, I think it's really so important.

And so David and Anuja were both on our task force as we were developing Innovate. Let me start with David and just say, you've been involved in a lot of these innovation summits and startup companies. Tell me a little bit about how you thought the planning went for this one and how was it unique from some of the other innovation summits you've been involved with? First off, congrats, Jared, for bringing this about.

Yeah, this kind of came at it from your mind to this well-organized, well-executed program that really, I think everyone that went got something really great out of it. I got to tell you, I was skeptical in the beginning. I thought we were casting a little bit too wide a net.

I think that the journey from idea to clinical benefit is a long and perilous one with lots of different touch points, lots of different actors. And we really didn't focus on a particular area. And it was a small period of time.

And I said, boy, this is an awful lot that we're biting off. But really, under your leadership and the people that put it together, you did a really great job. Right now, our field is in a really kind of critical point.

Our extended field, I focus on assisted reproduction, but beyond that, genetics, home delivery, all sorts of things. This is, we're kind of at that 50-year point where innovation just kind of takes off. And we studied innovation in all these different tech-related industries.

And you go from, you know, God, telegraph to telephone. You go from Wright Brothers to the first jet. You go from the first computer to the internet.

That 50-year point, a lot of things just coalesce. And in our case, we've had, you know, 50, 60 years of phenomenal science and kind of meandering systems innovation. And that's really changing now.

And you really picked the right point to put all the interested parties together in the same room and, you know, build off on that. So I think that, you know, people that came in with a good idea, that identified a need, wanted to figure out, okay, how do we approach that? People that have a solution said, great, how do I develop it? How do I fund it? How do I staff it? How do I get the clinical validation that makes it happen? How do I get it on the market? And how do I get it actually helping people? There was something for everybody along the way. And the quality of the questions and the inputs that I got from people, very, very high from my point of view.

Anusha, what was your favorite part of the Innovation Summit? Let me also start with just saying a big congratulations, Sherrod, to you, ASRM, and the team, as I start sort of responding to this. You know, it was a huge task when we first met as part of the planning committee. And we cast a broad net.

You know, we had our buckets of founders, funders, and then that third group, as you're calling them, the clinicians, the end users. But we did a phenomenal job in each of these. And not only did we bring the three groups together, I think the depth and the breadth within each group was what struck me as well.

So when I look at our final program, like within the founders, as you mentioned, there were people with med device, but, you know, small and big, like they were there. There was process and service innovation. It was not all fertility, REI, ART.

There were people talking about care delivery for PCOS endometriosis as well. And then there was direct-to-consumer, which was phenomenal. So to me, the favorite parts were one is the breadth of what we were able to bring together and within each part, how well-developed all of that was.

I also enjoyed the networking part. And I know we had talked a lot in our planning committee, you know, how that should be a focus, but it was successful. People weren't there at the end of that first day, just sort of tired after ASRM or pick up a bite and leave.

They stayed and they engaged. And I have a few anecdotes in terms of people who came and spoke to me, just like you said, Kate, you know, they want the access to people who are the end users. And at least in my role as a director of a women's health center for clinical innovation, I do have the time to meet with some of these startups, but that's not happening across the board.

So I think this was a great opportunity for people to just network in a very casual environment. So that was phenomenal. And overall, it was so well attended, right? So even before the meeting, I was getting emails from people saying it's sold out.

And I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, yeah, the tickets are sold out. Can you get us in? So there was a buzz and people were excited about it. So I can go on and on, but I just do want to say the first ASRM Innovate was super successful.

We mentioned that there were three sort of target groups, founders, funders, and clinicians, healthcare providers. On the day when we met, we broke into three groups of founders, funders, and clinicians. Not necessarily that the clinician should be with the clinicians and the founders should be with the founders, but breakout groups to learn more about these different areas of entrepreneurship.

And Kate, we had you as one of the co-leaders of the clinician breakout session. Tell me a little bit about how that breakout session went. Thank you, Jared.

Yeah, that session was so much fun. I wish I could do it every day. I learned a ton and heard so many great questions.

It was expertly moderated by John Petrozza, who, as he does, prepared meticulously. So we had multiple sessions getting ready. We had two full hours of prepared content.

It was myself and Natalie Crawford and Ron Adams and Carlos Simone. So a really humbling group of folks to be sitting among. And at the end of the day, John made his introductions and Edward O'Herriton, my good friend and colleague, stood up and asked an excellent question.

And from there to the very end, where we had folks coming up to us at the microphone to continue offline, we did not even touch the content. It was just absolute engagement from the audience throughout that entire session. Amazing questions.

Some of the ones that are really problematic were around that Catch-22 that we alluded to before. You know, how do I get good advice and access to a forum to test my product if I don't have data already to show you? And a lot of relationships formed out of that session. So I have had multiple follow-up meetings with some of the founders that were in the audience that had really illuminating ideas, some of which I think really will make it to prime time and solve for some of the pain points that we and our patients experience.

So I found it incredibly invigorating and fulfilling. So too were all the talks. Anuja and David both gave excellent talks.

Anuja gave a talk on the fast track to fertility, which has really been revolutionary in our field in terms of increasing the efficiency and the throughput so that we can help more patients. And David gave an incredible talk, as usual, about the need that we have to expand access to care. And Eduardo Harriton gave a great talk about disruption, which I think as all of us trained in academics at one point or another, there's a fairly high amount of resistance to, but disrupting from within with his mini-mill example that he elaborates so clearly.

And then Neil Shaw gave a really great talk on reproductive justice, which I think there were even a couple of tears in the room. So it was quite, as I said, an enlivening meeting, and I think it will only get better with time. I wanted to have you, Jared, also give us a little bit of a play-by-play on the pitch tank, because I know that was another, as Anuja said, you were ambitious in the agenda.

So not only did we have everything we just described, but not to be confused with Shark Tank, which may or may not be trademarked, but tell us a little bit about Pitch Tank and Genesys, the company that brought home the prize. So we wanted to do something fun at the meeting, and again, we had a whole bunch of founders that were part of our New Horizons space within the main part of the meeting. And as a way of getting founders to come to the meeting, we decided we would do a little competition.

We wanted to have five companies that we would be able to highlight, and we were really worried we would be able to get those five companies to be enthusiastic and come and pitch. We had over 100 applicants. I can't remember, I don't have the actual final number before me.

We had about 100 applicants, and we put it through a vigorous review, narrowed it down to about 35 companies that we then sent out to our task force, and ultimately narrowed that down to five new companies that would pitch. We used the audience response system to evaluate and vote on those companies. Each of them gave a five-minute presentation with an opportunity for questions and answers, and then Genesys, which is a company that is developing AI technology for evaluating embryos, they already have a working product in the animal space, and they're evaluating bovine embryos.

Really interesting technology. Then pitched the use of this technology in human and won our $10,000 prize. We're very, very grateful for our sponsors.

We had great sponsorship. We did have a $10,000 prize for the company. And from what I hear, they did such great networking at the meeting, they already are working on a clinical trial with some of the healthcare providers that were present at the Innovation Summit.

So that's really exciting to see. Not just excitement that the company won our pitch tank, but that the company made the connections at the Innovation Summit that they're moving their product along with their involvement with our healthcare providers. So really excited to use that company as an example of the success of Innovate.

Awesome. So case in point, it's all about collaboration. Thank you all for being here today for this mini episode.

I'll go to each of you for a closing remark. Why should every ASRM conference attendee register for the Innovate Summit in 2026? Anuja? It gives everybody something, right? As a clinician, there's so many exciting things happening in our field. But really to know what's on the forefront or what's in the pipeline, and to get it in a one-day, well-organized nutshell, ASRM Innovate is an easy way to do it.

Somebody has curated a program for you. In addition to that, it also lets you meet people that you might not cross paths with. You know, the founders are sometimes patients.

As we heard earlier, they could be engineers from different fields. And it's a very neat opportunity to just bring people together and get invigorated. So whether you're an innovator or not, I would strongly encourage you to come along and attend a day away.

I assure you, you'll go away inspired. David? Well, the currency of mentorship is advice and connections. How do you scale the acquisition of advice and connections? Well, Jared put together a terrific ecosystem in which to do that very, very rapidly.

If you need advisors, you need clinical validation. You need regulatory advice. You need funding.

You need to go from your core competence to that next step down the line towards commercialization and getting your idea out to patients. This is a really beautiful incubator for that. Well, I love Innovate.

I want to say that every ASRM attendee can't register for Innovate because we do have a limited number of spots available. I do think that for all of the reasons that David and Anuja stated, you should want to come to Innovate. So I would encourage you to register to the meeting and to Innovate early.

Because last year, we had spots for 250. We were hoping to get 100, and we immediately sold out. And actually, we expanded the number of spots that we had to try to accommodate people as best we can.

We are going to expand this year, but we still will have limited spots available. So I would encourage those of you that want to attend Innovate to register early so that it's not sold out. But I do think it's an opportunity.

I'm going to take this opportunity to state that Innovate is a—I love Innovate, obviously, and I'm humbled by the accolades I've gotten from Anuja and David about the development of this program. Obviously, it was—I had the idea, but it was you guys that actually created the program. So thank you so much for all the work that you guys did in such a short period of time to make it as exciting as it was.

And to the rest of the committee, and to my staff, Keith and Megan and Chavis and Jessica that worked so hard on developing the program. I do want to state that this is not the only business of medicine program that ASRM is developing. And so we are currently, in June of 2026, are going to be doing a joint program with the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society to host in Chicago a business of medicine meeting that's focused on financial literacy and leadership.

We have a really exciting program about how to have a fun and innovative way of teaching financial literacy to healthcare providers. I think that that's going to be a really exciting program, too. So really look to ASRM, where this year we're going to be having a number of other business masterclasses as well.

So really look to see ways in which you—if you have an interest in learning about the business of medicine, as I think everyone really should have that interest, to look for other ways that ASRM is going to be trying to push out that content as well. Awesome. OK, well, you heard it here.

When you register for ASRM, you better register fast for Innovate if you do want to go and look for that additional equally well thought out programming to help advance your education, expand your horizons in the business of medicine. Thanks so much to our Fertility and Sterility on Air listenership. Thanks to all three of you, Jared, Anuja, and David for joining us today.

We're recording this on December 15th. So stay warm and happy holidays to all of you. See you at Innovate 2026.

This concludes our episode of Fertility and Sterility on Air, brought to you by Fertility and Sterility in conjunction with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. This podcast is produced by Dr. Molly Kornfield, Dr. Adriana Wong, Dr. Elena HogenEsch, Dr. Selina Park, Dr. Carissa Pekny, and Dr. Nicholas Raja This podcast was developed by Fertility and Sterility and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as an educational resource in service to its members and other practicing clinicians.

While the podcast reflects the views of the authors and the host, it is not intended to be the only approved standard of practice or to direct an exclusive course of treatment. The opinions expressed are those of the discussants and do not reflect Fertility and Sterility or the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.