SINGAPORE - A new fertility centre equipped with state-of-the-art technology including an alert system to prevent errors was officially opened on Wednesday.
The private Virtus Fertility Centre, located at Scotts Medical Centre in Orchard, also has a clean room embryology laboratory.
The centre's radio-frequency identification system would prevent sample mismatch - an alarm will ring if samples from different couples are placed in the same work space.
"The tags contain electronically stored patient information and the movement of the patient's samples throughout the IVF process can be monitored," said Dr Roland Chieng, medical director of the centre.
The egg, sperm and embryos from couples undertaking in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) are handled in digitally-controlled environment chambers called cribs. They are meant to mimic a woman's uterine environment.
Together, these technology would eliminate even slight variations in the environment, be it in temperature or presence of pollutants, that could affect fertilisation and embryo development, said Dr Chieng.
The new centre is a collaboration between fertility services provider Virtus Health, headquartered in New South Wales, Australia, and fertility specialists from Singapore.
It started operations early this month and has had around 20 patients so far.
