One of the quiet truths in fertility is this: Most clinics and networks are running blind, and they don’t even realise it.
Not because they don’t care about data. Not because they’re behind the times. But because their technology history simply hasn’t given them the option of working any other way.
We’ve migrated clinics across multiple countries, from small single-site practices to national networks with dozens of providers. And every time we begin mapping their data, the same pattern appears. Let me paint the picture.
The typical clinic tech landscape (Brace yourself)
When we start an implementation, it’s not unusual to find:
40+ spreadsheets manually maintained by different teams
A legacy EMR (or two)
A separate patient management system
A consent platform
A billing or claims solution
A patient communication tool
A third-party scheduling app
A lab system that may or may not be connected to anything
A physical stack of paper that could legally classify as a forest
In larger groups, it gets even more interesting:
2-3 different EMRs or PMS systems across the network
Multiple instances of the same EMR, all configured differently
New clinics that have been acquired but never integrated
Legacy systems no one knows how to access
Years of unstructured data that no one trusts enough to use
Situations where data genuinely cannot be extracted, due to the vendor or the data architecture
It’s an ecosystem built by necessity, not by design. And the outcome is always the same:
The fertility clinic has no real visibility, not into operations, not into the patient journey, not into true success rates, not into bottlenecks, and not into how care varies across teams or locations.
You can’t optimise what you can’t see. And you can’t scale what you can’t measure.
The uncomfortable truth: most clinics don’t know what they’re missing
Clinics are filled with highly skilled people who want to make the right decisions, but they’re operating in environments where the basic ingredients for insight simply don’t exist.
It’s not their fault. Historically, data hasn’t been remotely accessible, let alone actionable.
So care teams adapt:
They rely on anecdotal patterns instead of real ones
They make decisions based on what feels slow or inefficient
They assume performance differences are random
They look at outcomes but not the underlying workflows
They react to problems instead of predicting them
And perhaps most importantly: They don’t realise how much they could know, because they’ve never had a single source that could show them.
We’ve seen fertility clinics genuinely shocked when they see real-time dashboards for the first time. Not because dashboards are new, but because the data they wished they had for years finally exists.
What a single, unified database actually unlocks
This is where things get interesting, and where clinics often underestimate the ROI.
A unified data foundation doesn’t just clean up your tech stack. It changes how your fertility clinic thinks and operates. Here are a few real examples we’ve seen:
1. Identifying bottlenecks you didn’t know existed
One multi-site clinic believed patient delays were caused by lab capacity. Once the data was centralised, they realised the real bottleneck was… scanning consent forms. Not the lab. Not the scheduling. Forms. A workflow redesign saved them thousands of hours a year.
2. Understanding true success rates
A large network had three different EMRs. The leadership team genuinely didn’t know if their success rates varied by doctor, protocol, site, or diagnosis. When everything was unified, they discovered:
Two clinics were using significantly different stimulation protocols
One clinic had a notably higher drop-off between retrieval and transfer
Their “best-performing” clinic was actually just documenting more consistently
Once aligned, the entire network improved.
3. Financial visibility that actually makes sense
A clinic with patchwork tools believed their cycle revenue was predictable. After unifying their data, they learned:
12% of invoices were being issued late
Refunds were inconsistently documented
Cryo storage was underbilled in all sites and had very low collection rates
Patients were being charged differently for the same items
A modern data foundation brought transparency, and a six-figure annual correction.
4. Lab insights that used to be impossible
Embryologists are incredibly data-driven by training, but rarely have the infrastructure to live like it.
One lab discovered:
Which incubators consistently had higher blast conversion
Which days of the week saw the highest cancellation risk
Where embryologist workflows were diverging from best practice
How biopsy load actually influenced downstream outcomes
This isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s live operational intelligence.
5. Predicting patient behaviour
With one database, you suddenly see patterns like:
When patients are most likely to drop out
Which communications increase treatment continuity
Which appointment types correlate with delayed cycles
What payment behaviours predict financial risk
This is the foundation for true patient-centred care.
The ROI clinics underestimate the most: Staff happiness and burnout reduction
When your data is scattered, every role becomes reactive.
Nurses are correcting mistakes instead of guiding patients
Admin is chasing missing information
Finance is reconciling instead of planning
The lab is firefighting instead of optimising
Doctors are making decisions without a clear picture of context
When everything lives in one source, workflows become calmer and predictable. Teams stop improvising and start performing. This isn’t just an operational issue, it’s a retention issue. We are sure that clinics with unified data foundations have happier, more stable teams (something we are working on measuring right now). And that alone pays for the system many times over.
The real takeaway: data isn’t a feature, it’s a strategy
Most clinics think about data as a byproduct of their tools. But the most successful networks treat data as a strategic asset:
for care quality
for clinical decision-making
for operational performance
for financial management
for growth and acquisitions
for patient experience
for consistency across sites
for leadership visibility
for continuous improvement
for competitive advantage
And the foundation of all of that is the same: one database, one source of truth, one version of reality. Because without that, every insight is fragmented. Every decision is slower, every improvement is harder and every patient journey is more fragile than it needs to be.
