Univfy Helps Health Providers Expand Fertility Patients' Access to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)
BALTIMORE, Oct. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- At the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Annual Meeting in Baltimore this year, Univfy, the global leader in predictive analytics for in vitro fertilization (IVF), announces a new program to help fertility providers qualify more patients for IVF refund programs. In response to requests from both fertility patients and providers, the Univfy-Powered IVF Refund Program* provides patients with personalized probabilities of their IVF success. Univfy's highly accurate and objective assessments, customized to each center's IVF data, enable providers to expand eligibility of their IVF refund programs to more than half of their patients.
In a typical IVF refund program, an IVF center offers patients up to three IVF treatments and associated frozen embryo transfers and returns a partial or complete refund of the program fees if the patient does not have a baby from any of the IVF treatments. Though many patients want to participate in these programs to lower the financial risk of pursuing multiple IVF treatments, many may not qualify because the criteria of current programs are too stringent. Univfy's analytics show that more than 50% of women have better chances of success with IVF than their age alone would suggest, potentially qualifying more patients for IVF refund programs and broadening access to IVF.
"By using advanced analytics, the Univfy-Powered IVF Refund Program can help more fertility patients qualify for refund programs, which is expected to increase each patient's chance of success," says Mylene Yao, M.D., Co-founder and CEO of Univfy. "IVF is a highly effective treatment for most fertility patients, but many are not able to make the best use of it or get to it too late. We are using science and big data to change that for fertility patients."
The Univfy-Powered IVF Refund Program can be applied to existing refund programs, or the Univfy team can assist IVF centers without a refund program to build one. Univfy will also work directly with individual IVF centers to customize, implement, and execute an IVF refund program that expands patients' access to IVF.
Univfy is currently working with IVF centers to offer the Univfy-Powered IVF Refund Program starting in 2016. Key to these efforts is the experienced client services team that Univfy has assembled:
Dr. Mylene Yao, co-founder and CEO of Univfy, is a former Stanford University faculty member and an expert fertility researcher. Dr. Yao has led Univfy to apply scientific findings and proprietary predictive analytics, developed by Univfy's founding team of Stanford University researchers, to make IVF more accessible to fertility patients globally.
Julie Westlund, Vice President of Client Services, leads Univfy's outreach to fertility providers with over 25 years of client services experience in IVF. Prior to Univfy, Ms. Westlund held lead roles in client services in IVF at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, EMD Serono, IntegraMed, and Premier IVF.
In August, Univfy recruited Nancy Harrington, RNC-REIN, to lead clinical implementation as Director of Clinical Solutions. An accomplished fertility expert with over 27 years of experience in IVF, Ms. Harrington led Development and Network Strategy at Optum, the clinical services arm of United Healthcare Group, prior to joining Univfy. She has also held leadership roles in clinical practice, provider engagement, and business development at EMD Serono and Ivpcare (now Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy).
For more information, please contact Catherine Yang at catherinetyang@yahoo.com.
About Univfy: Univfy Inc. is dedicated to helping fertility patients build their families. With accurate, personalized predictions of IVF treatment success, Univfy enables patients to get on the right fertility path sooner and expands access to IVF by making it more affordable.
Founded in 2009 by experts in reproductive medicine, embryo and uterine research, and biostatistics from Stanford University, Univfy has applied its proprietary, scientifically-validated predictive analytics* to data from over 150,000 IVF treatments and 500,000 embryos to develop customized prediction models for leading IVF centers around the globe. Univfy has a strong track record of peer-reviewed scientific publications showing that Univfy's IVF predictions are validated to be 1,000 times more accurate than age-based estimates. We aim to make IVF accessible to more patients and to increase the chance of IVF success for every patient.
*Patent pending.
SOURCE Univfy Inc.