Adelaide-based medical technology company Presagen has sold its Life Whisperer division, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to better select healthy embryos for IVF, to Japanese medical equipment manufacturer Astec in a deal that aims to further embed the company’s technology in IVF labs globally.
Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but Astec says it is already offering Life Whisperer to its customers in Japan and Indonesia with plans to introduce the technology to other international markets.
“We are excited to incorporate Life Whisperer in our product range to further our mission of supporting the assisted reproductive industry globally,” says Takeo Cho, deputy CEO of Astec which manufactures medical equipment for assisted reproduction at its Fukuoka plant.
“We believe AI will be a core feature of every IVF lab in the future and we are delighted to offer our customers one of the most advanced and validated products in the market.”
Life Whisperer is the key product for Presagen and a non-invasive technology developed by Dr Jonathan Hall, Dr Michelle Perugini and Dr Don Perugini in 20https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/16 with a view to improving the outcomes of IVF treatment.
Hall and Perugini were finalists in Business News Australia’s 20https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/19 Australian Young Entrepreneur Awards.
Life Whisperer uses AI to assess 2D images of embryos to determine the likelihood of success in IVF.
The technology employs three AI algorithms – Life Whisperer Viability, which assesses images of embryos; Life Whisperer Genetics, which evaluates an embryo’s morphological quality; and Life Whisperer Oocyte, which evaluates images of oocytes to determine how likely they are to form a good quality embryo.
The AI technology has been able to improve the accuracy of identifying the viability of embryos by at least 25 per cent compared with conventional morphology assessment by embryologists.
Life Whisperer is currently approved for use in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.
The technology is already being used in IVF clinics across 47 countries, with Presagen launching it into the US last year.
Astec says that through its existing global distribution network in the fertility sector, the acquisition will “accelerate the proliferation of this promising AI technology into IVF labs around the world”.
Astec is headquartered in Fukuoka, Japan, with subsidiaries in Seoul in South Korea, Shanghai in China and Boston in the US.
Following the sale, Presagen, which was founded by Michelle and Don Perugini the same year as they established Life Whisperer, continues to investigate opportunities in the femtech space which it says is critically underserviced globally.
Michelle Perugini says Presagen will be supporting Astec for the next year with product integration, although “not from a commercial perspective”.
Perugini says the company’s core patented technology remains its federated AI platform “that allows us to access federated datasets and build AI products on globally distributed data without moving or seeing the data, and thus maintaining data privacy”.
“This is a huge emerging theme in healthcare where data privacy is paramount,” Perugini tells Business News Australia.
