Name: Investors Could Democratize The Fertility Industry
Uploaded: 2020-01-20
Duration: 5 min 46 s
Description: Investors funneled $646 million into the fertility sector in 2018.

So the fertility industry used to be considered niche, luxury, even elective in some ways. And I think what we're seeing now is a real shift in terms of recognizing that infertility treatment is actually really quarter our health care system. So it used to exist really outside of traditional healthcare We're seeing a big push toward legitimizing this field, showing that it's serious medicine and really making it core to the benefit system in the US. There's a couple things that are really making the fertility space so appealing to investors right now. One I think is that the millennial population is actually aging into Fertility Care. And Millennials are set to transform the sector of the economy like they've transformed so many others. I think they've made it less taboo to talk about they've reduced the stigma and therefore I think people are recognising that this is way more common than people thought. I think people are also recognising that the cost of treatment is out of reach for a lot of people and access is a big thing on everybody's mind. So how can we make Fertility treatment, something that is affordable for the population that's not super wealthy, that can't necessarily afford to do this out of pocket. We've seen startups pop up all over the space in the sector, so there are some that are wearable. So Ava bracelet, for example, is one that tracks ovulation. There are some that track menstrual cycles. We've seen some self diagnostic tests. There's companies sort of all over the place here that are trying to get a piece of this market because it has been just so historically underserved. One really interesting startup in the space is a company Company called modern fertility Meet modern fertility. The test that teaches you about your eggs and fertility hormones. Modern fertility is a women's health company focused on making personalized fertility information accessible to women earlier in life. So our first product is the modern fertility hormone tests. We took the same exact laboratory tests that a woman would do in an infertility clinic. If she and her partner were having trouble getting pregnant. We took those exact same tests out of the clinic and made them available to women earlier in life at a fraction of the cost and a really easy to access format. So we're able through for example, testing your age levels, anti malaria and hormone levels to actually understand the number of eggs that you have in your ovaries. And the number of eggs you have in your ovaries can help you understand really important things around your reproductive career. So it's not your ability to get pregnant right now but if you're thinking about Maybe kid number two or kid number three. What does the age of menopause look like for you and how do you think about that overall spectrum. We can have conversations about conditions like PCOS that impacts one in ten women. That's one of the leading causes of infertility. Conditions like POI, premature ovarian insufficiency that impacts one in a hundred A 100 women that are associated with early menopause onset and a variety of other health conditions. And so it's really about just owning and having this window into your own biology to be able to use that information to make decisions that are right for you and your timeline. Another company that is doing some really interesting wirk in this space Carrot Fertility. And they're really much more of a benefits provider. So they're not an insurance company, but they're helping employers basically disperse fertility benefits to their employees. I have a personal experience with fertility in the fertility healthcare system, and I was fortunate enough that I had about $ 35000 in my own savings in order to pay for my fertility treatment. But what I realized was that most people in America don't most Americans actually don't have more than $ 500 of savings. And 150 million Americans receive their healthcare coverage through employers in this country than any other way. That's more than Medicare and Medicaid mine. And so we wanted to partner with employers to make it easy for them to deliver this aspect of health care coverage and we wanna make fertility benefits and Fertility Care, a standard part of compensation packages that work like medical, dental and vision. So we work with employers to create what we call a care plan. Design. Carrot plan designs are sort of first of its kind, flexible fertility spending. Every employer has a plan design, of anywhere between $ 10, 000 per employee to $ 100, 000 or more. And again, there's no right number. It's really what is right for your business at your stage of growth. Once those parameters are set, sort of we plug and play and Carrot takes care of the rest as a software service. One of the ways that I really do hope the sector continues to change as more money pours in is that it actually does increase access for more women. So I think fertility treatment has historically been viewed as for a certain kind of woman A white woman, a wealthy woman, an educated woman. And I think that what really needs to change here is that access is broadened. And this really becomes something that is attainable for basically anyone who wants to get treatment. However, there really are some issues that people have with the space overall, basically, are we just reinforcing stereotypes that we've long had about women and fertility so Women's worth being tied to reproduction, the burden of reproduction falling on women, that biological children are the best way to have a family. I think if we can really rethink some of those stereotypes then that will actually be progress in the field overall. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Investors Could Democratize The Fertility Industry

Health

$646 million was invested into the fertility sector in 2018.

Investors funneled $646 million into the fertility sector in 2018.