Life

There Might Be A Much Cheaper Way For Women To Test Their Fertility

by Gillian Walters

Women who struggle with fertility know all too well that fertility testing can be incredibly expensive. Due to the outstanding costs, a lot of women delay fertility testing, which can cause complications in the long run. Considering all women deserve to know crucial information about their bodies, this company decided to offer a cheaper way for women to test their fertility. To make matters even more amazing, the company was conceived (see what I did there?) by two female entrepreneurs dedicated to making fertility a public health issue.

According to Parents, basic fertility testing can cost up to $2,000 while more invasive tests can exceed $5,000 dollars. For many women, fertility testing is simply too expensive, an issue Afton Vechery discovered firsthand when she had her fertility tested at a San Francisco clinic. Vechery, a former exec at Uber, was so disturbed by her $1,500 fertility testing bill that in 2016 she decided to co-found Modern Fertility, a company dedicated to lowering fertility testing costs for women, according to Forbes. Vechery's business partner, Carly Leahy, who developed UberHEALTH — a pilot program that offered consumers flu care packages and the option to receive a flu shots available on-demand — is also just as innovative, according to Medium.

Vechery said, according to Forbes:

We view this as a public health issue. Every woman should have this information.

Armed with this idea in mind, Vechery and Leahy developed an extensive fertility testing kit that you can now pre-order for $149. The test, which will fully be available in late 2017, will evaluate 10 fertility hormones, including the "Anti-mullerian hormone (AMH), Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), Estradiol (E2), Luteinizing hormone (LH), Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), Free thyroxine (FT4), Progesterone (P4), Prolactin (PRL), Free Testosterone (Free T), and the Total Testosterone (T)," according to TechCrunch. Most importantly, the test will asses a woman's ovarian reserve (aka the number of viable eggs a woman has).

As for how the test actually works, women will send four finger-prick blood samples to a physician for review. Once the blood is analyzed, the results will be available on a personalized online dashboard. Even better yet, the results will be paired alongside comprehensive explanations, so clients will have the best understanding of what's going on with their fertility. Knowledge is power, right?

Luckily for Vechery and Leahy, Modern Fertility received $1,000,000 in funding from First Round Capital to bring their company to life. Phin Barnes, a partner of First Round Capital, said of the idea, according to VentureBeat:

There is a huge movement towards personalized medicine and patient empowerment in health care. And yet, state of the art advice around one of the most important decisions a woman can make is, "just have them before you are 35…" Modern Fertility will provide the information women need to map out their lives in their own, modern way.

If you're a prospective parent, fertility can be a daunting issue to consider for a number of reasons. Although fertility can be a big subject to grapple with, it's important that you get your fertility tested. Fertility is a public health issue, and testing your fertility could help you uncover important medical issues that you might have not otherwise known about. Now that Vechery and Leahy have made fertility testing more affordable, more women will have access to crucial information about their bodies, and this is a beautiful thing worth celebrating.