Why I Built Berry Fertility

It was the evening before I was about to start an egg freezing treatment and I sat surrounded by medications, syringes, and vials, overwhelmed by what I was about to start.

Would I be using that many syringes over the course of the next few days? What were all these medications supposed to do? I was flooded with questions and logistical angst. I thought about canceling the whole ordeal, and called a friend who had been through it before to walk me through the next couple of days.

This experience is more often than not the norm — especially for first-time fertility patients. The constant appointments, medication schedules, and emotional toll can make the process feel like a demanding second job. I tried searching for an app or service that could support me throughout this process, but all the options felt subpar and buggy.

It’s why I started Berry Fertility.

Berry helps fertility clinics modernize their software stack and provide personalized, concierge-level care for their patients. We meet patients where they are and provide tailored information exactly when they need it with easy-to-use intake tools and a comprehensive mobile app.

Our mission is to radically improve fertility care, making it more accessible, efficient, and personalized for patients and clinical staff.

Challenges in Modern Fertility Care

Fertility treatments are overwhelming because they often stand at the intersection of economic, physical, and emotional distress. Research suggests that an estimated 30%–40% of women that receive infertility care experience clinically significant depression and anxiety.

And this distress affects a not-insignificant part of our population: about four-in-ten adults (42%) say they have used fertility treatments or personally know someone who has, up from 33% five years ago.

Fertility clinics are expanding and consolidating to meet this growing demand for fertility services, but they need ways to do so without compromising on quality.

The problem is that the number of REIs trained each year is insufficient. By some estimates the average REI provider would have to oversee about 4-6 times more cycles per year than they do today to meet forecast demand. Clinics also face challenges with retaining and training nurses, who often require a full year to master the specialty. Losing trained staff creates setbacks, overburdening teams, and making it harder to uphold the patient-centered care clinics strive for.

Lastly, we know that "clinic switching” is widely prevalent in the US. 52% of patients are treated in more than one fertility clinic, and a third of those patients leave their first clinic due to inadequate attention or service. 

Berry helps clinics tackle these challenges by providing the digital tools and personalized support that today’s digitally-savvy patients expect.

How Berry Helps Clinics

During intake, Berry’s tools inform patients about their fertility options, reduce the paperwork they have to fill in, and help them get to a first appointment faster. 

During treatment, the Berry mobile app helps patients learn and manage each step of their cycle in one place. The app provides educational videos, articles, and questions at relevant stages, helping patients understand what to expect next and what’s normal.

It also streamlines communication, reducing the 2-4 hours nurses typically spend each day on calls, follow-ups, and sending paper calendars. Appointment and dosage updates are all available through the app, along with injection videos and detailed yet digestible information about the purpose, storage, and side effects of medications.

We complement the highly personal work of nurses so they can focus on high-impact work. 

Finally, AI offers a transformative opportunity for clinics to modernize their software, streamline administrative tasks, and manage patient data more efficiently and safely. At Berry we help clinics with AI tools and custom solutions that automate clerical work, save staff time, and help provide highly personalized support to patients. This means features that let patients instantly find medication information by scanning them with their phone camera to chat models that help clinical staff enhance their text-based support to patients by providing suggestions based on previous interactions.

High Touch, Tailored Support for Our Customers

Medical software is often clunky, confusing, and bug-ridden—for both patients and staff. We’ve heard from fertility patients who sometimes can’t even log into their patient portals. And we’ve heard from REIs that are frustrated by feature requests to their tech vendors that go unfulfilled for years. At least one doctor told us they can’t get their vendor to reply to their emails. 

To us this is unacceptable. 

I’m a software engineer by training and spent many years at Google and GitHub (owned by Microsoft) launching new AI-enabled products for consumers and enterprise users. My team and I have launched apps with usage in the millions of users. 

We care deeply about creating quality software and we each have professional or personal experience in the fertility space. It’s why we partner closely with fertility clinics to ensure we help solve their most critical problems while providing world-class support. 

We’re committed to raising the standard of care for both fertility clinics and patients alike.

If our mission resonates, please reach out at irene@berryfertility.com.