Running a high-performing IVF laboratory requires more than clinical expertise. It requires a carefully considered technology stack, built from tools that have been tested in real laboratory conditions and evaluated against real patient outcomes. This post is a practical guide to the platforms and products that form the operational backbone across my laboratories.
Every item on this list is something I use, have validated, and recommend based on direct experience. There are no sponsorships or affiliate arrangements here, just a working laboratory director sharing what actually works. Technology choices in an IVF laboratory are not just operational decisions, they have direct implications for patient-facing costs, and selecting the right tools can meaningfully reduce per-procedure expenses without compromising outcomes.
As a bonus for my network: if you reach out to any of these vendors, mention my name and you should be able to access the same pricing I receive. The more labs I refer to the tools, companies, and people I LOVE the better discounts we ALL get. Consider it a professional courtesy from one lab to another.
Let’s get started!
Cryostorage Management and Billing: Fertility Billing Solutions
I have moved away from automatic (reflexive) aneuploid embryo discard in my labs. Have you? We now reconfirm consent, and discard after the last euploid transfer, for the highest standard of safety. Changing policy in the lab can lead to chaos! Your billing department can be thrown for a sudden loop without the right billing management solutions.
Cryostorage management is one of the most administratively complex and legally exposed areas of an IVF practice, and it’s one that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in conversations about laboratory technology and safety. I turn to Fertility Billing Solutions (FBS) to manage abandoned specimens: embryos, eggs, and sperm left in storage by patients who have stopped communicating, which represent a genuine liability to me. Not to mention, financial losses from uncollected storage fees, compliance exposure from incomplete documentation, and a real moral burden on staff who are indefinitely stewarding specimens with no clear path to resolution.
The system adapts to clinic-specific billing policies, whether you bill by cycle, specimen type, or storage date, and supports both monthly and annual billing options with transparent patient-facing views that reduce confusion and the support calls that come with it. Critically, FBS automates the outreach and documentation workflows that would otherwise fall to overburdened embryologists and administrative staff: digital audit trails, automated renewal reminders, consent pathway management, and collections. On the lab metrics side, the platform tracks specimen inventory by type, freeze method, and aneuploidy ratios over time, which is useful not just for storage reconciliation but for clinical audit support and patient counseling. Fertility Billing Solutions was developed during peak PGT-A adoption, and the system is built to intake per-embryo results at the chromosomal level. As practice patterns shift away from reflexive discard of aneuploid embryos, FBS supports informed storage management; most critically by flagging patients whose remaining frozen cohort consists entirely of aneuploid embryos.
Andrology
Every IVF laboratory runs on a stack of technology decisions, and the ones made in the andrology lab set the tone for everything downstream in an IVF cycle. After evaluating multiple semen preparation platforms, the ProteX™ Semen Collection Cup paired with the NovoSort® Sperm Preparation Device has become a cornerstone of our andrology workflow. The system is built around a simple but powerful idea: keep sperm in a single, controlled environment from collection through processing. The ProteX™ cup is polymer-coated for temperature stability and features a funnel design that limits reactive oxygen species (ROS) exposure — two variables that matter enormously for sperm DNA integrity. The NovoSort® device integrates directly with the cup, isolating motile sperm without tube transfers, which reduces both handling stress and contamination risk. Critically for our quality system, the entire process requires only one electronic witnessing (EW) label, compared to three for a laminar flow separation device and four for conventional density gradient preparation. That single label isn’t just a workflow convenience — it’s a meaningful cost reduction and a chain-of-custody simplification that compounds across hundreds of procedures per year. Our laboratory formally validated this transition, comparing outcomes across more than 2,000 MII oocytes and nearly 400 transfers between device generations. Fertilization rate improved from 67.5% to 75.0% (p<0.001) and utilization rate from 21.6% to 35.5% (p<0.001), while pregnancy outcomes remained statistically equivalent. Per-procedure cost savings of $35–$39 compared to our previous platform were an added confirmation that the right clinical choice and the right financial choice were the same choice. I will be presenting these data at the AAB / CRB conference May 5-8th, 2026.
Environmental Monitoring Systems: Pharmawatch
Environmental monitoring is one of those infrastructure decisions that feels invisible when it’s working and catastrophic when it isn’t. After testing several alarm and monitoring systems, PharmaWatch™ has become our platform of choice for temperature, humidity, pressure, and liquid nitrogen storage monitoring across the lab. What sets it apart for an IVF setting is the combination of things it doesn’t require: no connection to your internal network, no IT setup, no manual data downloads. PharmaWatch™ runs entirely on secure multi-carrier cellular communication, which means your monitoring infrastructure is completely isolated from your clinic’s firewalls and IT systems — a meaningful security advantage in an era of increasing ransomware exposure in healthcare. Built-in battery backup keeps the system collecting and transmitting for up to five days through power or internet outages, which matters when you have cryostorage tanks full of irreplaceable samples. On the compliance side, the platform automatically generates FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and GxP-aligned audit documentation, and the OneClick™ reporting tool produces inspection-ready reports in seconds rather than hours. For a laboratory director managing CAP inspections and continuous regulatory readiness, that’s not a minor convenience! It’s hours of staff time recovered and a material reduction in our CAP Inspection preparation and audit anxiety.
Supply Chain: IVF Store
Supply chain is not a glamorous topic, but anyone who has run an IVF laboratory through a backorder, a sudden vendor discontinuation, or a tariff-driven price surge knows exactly how quickly it becomes the most urgent problem in the building. We are operating in an era of compounding global instability, geopolitical disruption, escalating trade policy volatility, and increasingly severe weather events are no longer background noise for laboratory directors; they are active variables in procurement planning. Culture media manufactured overseas, cryogenic supplies dependent on international shipping lanes, consumables sourced from single-country suppliers, all of it is vulnerable in ways that were largely theoretical a decade ago and are now routine operational risks.
A single port disruption, a new tariff schedule, or a regional climate event can ripple through a lab’s supply chain within weeks, and mid-cycle patients have no margin for error in a lab that wasn’t prepared.
IVF Store has become our preferred purchasing partner precisely because consolidation is a form of resilience. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia, they supply IVF and andrology laboratories across the country with the full range of what a lab actually needs: media, oil, and consumables; ICSI and procedure supplies; cryopreservation products; andrology collection and processing supplies; semen analysis essentials; equipment sourcing; and calibration, servicing, and repair support. Fewer vendor relationships means fewer single points of failure, and a single point of contact staffed by people who understand laboratory workflow, rather than generalist procurement reps who don’t know the difference between an oil overlay and a density gradient, means faster problem-solving when disruptions hit. For a multi-site laboratory operation, supply chain simplification is not an efficiency play. It is risk management.
Preimplanation Genetic Testing (PGT): Progenesis
Preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) has become a standard offering in most IVF programs, and the platform you choose to deliver it matters both clinically and operationally. We love Previda® by Progenesis for chromosomal copy number analysis on biopsied embryos. Previda® screens for the full range of aneuploidies (monosomies, trisomies, and other copy number abnormalities) providing the chromosome-level information that informs embryo prioritization for transfer. It is important to be clear with patients about what PGT-A does and does not do: it evaluates chromosome copy number and is not designed to detect single-gene disorders, which require a separate PGT-M workflow.
Clinically, PGT-A is most commonly indicated for patients of advanced maternal age, those with unexplained infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, or a history of failed IVF cycles; populations where aneuploidy rates are elevated and the cost of transferring an abnormal embryo, in both human and financial terms, is high. Previda® fits cleanly into laboratory workflows and gives clinical teams the reporting clarity they need to counsel patients and make informed transfer decisions.
But Wait, There’s More!
This post covers the cryostorage billing, andrology, monitoring, cryostorage, supply chain, and PGT layers of our laboratory stack, but it is far from the complete picture. There are several exceptional products in our workflow that deserve their own dedicated treatment: electronic witnessing systems, electronic medical records platforms, time-lapse incubation, and the growing landscape of AI tools for embryo evaluation and selection, stimulation monitoring, and beyond. The technology available to IVF laboratories right now is genuinely remarkable, and the decisions made around these tools have direct implications for patient outcomes, laboratory efficiency, and regulatory readiness. We will be covering all of it in a follow-up post, stay tuned!
If any of these tools resonate with your laboratory’s needs, I encourage you to reach out directly to me at Carol@FertilityGuidanceTechnologies.com or to the companies referenced in this post. Every vendor listed here was selected based on validated data, operational experience, and patient outcome impact. I’m happy to share more about how any of them fit into a real laboratory workflow. The links to each company are embedded throughout this post. You can mention my name when you contact them for preferred pricing. Good technology decisions compound over time, and the IVF community is better served when we share what’s actually working.
About the Author
Carol Curchoe, PhD, HCLD, is a certified IVF Laboratory Director at Poma Fertility in Seattle, Washington, Reproductive Resource Center of Greater Kansas City, and Cryomate in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is also the Director of Science and Innovation at Progenesis. Most recently, she served as Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Special Interest Group at ASRM (2024–2025) and previously held a leadership role on the AI Special Interest Board of Directors (2023–2024). Prior to the formal establishment of the AI SIG, she was actively involved beginning in 2020 in the foundational efforts to organize and develop what became the official ASRM AI SIG. Her professional focus centers on technology development, education, quality assurance, and regulatory compliance within reproductive laboratories. She has dedicated her career to strengthening laboratory standards, building educational programming, and developing systems that improve clinical outcomes while ensuring adherence to evolving regulatory frameworks. She brings a strong understanding of operational oversight, governance, and the practical challenges faced by clinics and laboratories in implementing new technologies responsibly.