Carrot Fertility, a provider of employer sponsored fertility benefits, has partnered with Ava, a digital women’s health company, to offer employers an ovulation tracking tool that helps women and couples get pregnant faster through timed intercourse.
Carrot wanted to offer an option for employees who don’t want to utilize in vitro fertilization or other invasive and costly fertility treatments as their first option.
“We wanted to offer them a path and a Carrot member experience that could be personalized, done at home, and allow them to achieve a healthy pregnancy without those interventions,” says Tammy Sun, Carrot Fertility co-founder and CEO.
The Ava Bracelet is supported by Carrot’s telehealth network. Ava uses machine-learning algorithms to support Carrot members with key insights to help them get pregnant faster. Utilizing multiple physiological parameters including skin temperature, resting pulse rate, and breathing rate, the Ava bracelet predicts a woman’s fertile window with 89% accuracy.
“All of these things are indicators of ovulation and can increase the likelihood of pregnancy through timed intercourse,” Sun says.
Fertility benefits are an important investment for employers as it “can be a cost savings [tool] for everyone,” Sun says. “We want fertility care to be accessible and flexible coverage to be there if [employees] need it. But if that's not their first preference in how they want to pursue parenthood, [then the bracelet] is a great experience for members.”
The price of fertility treatments like IVF can be prohibitively high for employees, costing $12,000 per cycle on average, and just 18% of employers offer IVF coverage. About 19% of employers offer infertility treatments, other than IVF, to employees, according to the Society for Human Research Management’s 2019 employee benefits survey. Both figures declined by roughly 7% when compared to the previously collected data in 2017.
Carrot’s comprehensive fertility care and pregnancy telehealth resources will allow companies to empower their employees and their partners with valuable fertility and reproductive health support, which can lead to thousands of dollars in cost savings.
“Fertility is part of healthcare and we've seen employers really taking a look at what matters in their health care budgets, particularly now,” Sun says. “It is increasingly important in the time of COVID-19 that employees have access to telemedicine. Having an at home solution that does not require a person to necessarily have to go into a physical location is something that employers will really value.”
