Disrupting Fertility Care with Global Clinicians w/ The IVF Guide Founder & CEO, Julia Paget | HealthBiz Briefs

Julia Paget (Founder & CEO, The IVF Guide) discusses how her company is changing fertility care by operating as a global hub of independent clinical embryologists and fertility nurses providing remote services for clinics and patients.

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CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT JULIA PAGET
Julia is a renowned fertility and healthcare executive possessing a rare blend of commercial, operational, clinical, strategy, compliance, and project management skills. With over 25 years' experience in both private and NHS settings, Julia is an inspiring leader and entrepreneur who has delivered world-class fertility services and successfully built healthcare businesses across four continents.

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Transcript

0:00

IVF is expensive, stressful, and time consuming for patients. And running a fertility clinic is pretty tough too. But maybe embryology as a service is the answer. Welcome to Health Biz Briefs. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group here with the IVF guide, founder, and CEO, Julia Paget. The IVF Guide is the first global hub of independent clinical embryologists and fertility nurses providing remote services for clinics and patients. Welcome, Julia. Hi, thanks for having me. So what is this Alabama case that effectively seems to have banned IVF and what are the implications? Yeah, well, enormous implications. It sort of seems to blindside us out of nowhere. It clearly came from a really sad situation where patients managed to enter the cryobank and destroy some embryos. And that's horrific and should be given very serious attention. However, somehow in the ruling of that case, they have been classified as children or having the same status as children. And the impact is just enormous because... IVF is a numbers game and you always start off with a number of eggs and through that process, embryos will not develop or are not good enough to freeze or be transferred and they'll need to be discarded. So by claiming that they have the same status as children, where do we go with that? It's an impossible scenario for IVF clinics and the patients involved. Julia, you've worked on IVF really in a lot of places in the world, the UK, the US, New Zealand, maybe Spain, a few other places. how do approaches differ and what's not different? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, they really do differ. It's very interesting. And I've been very privileged to work in a lot of different clinics. Certainly, I suppose regulation is very different across the board. UK is one of the heaviest regulated countries. However, it doesn't necessarily have the highest success rates. And... I would say America is one of the best places. If I was going to have IVF, you know, 20 years ago, I would have tried to have it in America because the success rates are the best. And when it comes down to it, people just want to have a baby. Now, of course, they want to have that baby safely and appropriately and ethically. But I believe the Americans do that really, really well. Certainly my experience of it. New Zealand was a really innovative and fantastic place to work. They don't have access to the same technology and definitely not the same revenue streams, but they will reinvent the wheel to make sure that they are up there as a global player. And then I think working in the UK was really interesting. It's very hierarchical, so quite a different model. And you've got the public -private balance going on. And I would say that, you know, success rates are okay there. And some clinics really shine above the others, but I would say there's probably a lot more variability in the UK. And then also I worked in Asia and that's really interesting too. There's not so much regulation there, but very good success rates in Asia as well. And there's a lot, it's a really developing market in Asia at the moment in IVF. Great. So what is the concept behind the IVF guide and what progress have you made on that so far? So the idea behind the IVF guide is really releasing those embryologists and nurses from their clinics, you know, so much so that they, you know, every day they have to go to work and they're doing their IVFs and XTs in the labs, but they tend to be the embryologists. Sometimes the powerhouse of these clinics, they are brilliantly clever people and they have so much more to offer in terms of patient care than just being in the lab. And... much of their day is actually spent on the phone with patients or developing the clinic's protocols or the quality management systems, et cetera. So what I'm suggesting is that clinics can outsource a huge amount of embryology work that isn't the hands -on IVF in the lab to someone working remotely and independently and flexibly at home. And embryologists are jumping on this, you know, with both hands because so far there's not been an opportunity for them to work in a flexible way. And once we started with embryologists, we were coming across amazing fertility nurses as well. And we're like, well, let's add that in because fertility nurses also so much of their work can be done outside of the clinic. And this way clinics will save a lot of money because they'll only be paying for a few hours or a subscription for access to these support services. But they'll also reduce the burnout of their staff on the ground. They'll reduce distraction risks and just increase operational efficiencies. And then once we've got all these fertility nurses and embryologists working at home, we can also support the patients that so importantly need our help as well in an independent way. So we're not be aligned to any clinic and we can support them through that whole process. Great. Well, Julia Paget, founder and CEO of the IVF Guide. Thanks for joining me on Health Biz Briefs. If you like what you hear, check out my Health Biz Podcast for a full length interview with Julia about her life and career.