How Smartphones Can Actually Improve Male Fertility

Shafiee emphasized that the new smartphone-based test could fill a “gap” that exists in terms of home fertility tests for men.

The smartphone-based infertility test is one of several diagnostics now being developed, but provides an accessibility that could help test many men may otherwise reluctant to seek medical advice, said Matthew Wosnitzer, a fertility specialist in the Yale-New Haven Health System who was not involved with the study.

Shafiee’s team made a decision to test the new device on 350 unprocessed semen samples from a fertility clinic to analyze the quality of the semen by using the guidelines from the World Health Organization.

Talk of semen and sperm is anything but a giggling business for the more than 45 million couples worldwide dealing with infertility-and more than 40 percent of those cases involve male infertility.

Note that the results are an example of how smartphones can be seamlessly integrated with hardware, software, and microfluidics to develop a point-of-care diagnostic device to address clinical gaps in male infertility management.

His team’s new approach aims to change that with a simple and low-cost at-home test option. Manual microscope-based testing and computer-assisted semen analysis (CASA) are the current standard methods to diagnose male infertility, however, these methods are labor-intensive, expensive, and laboratory-based. Shafiee says he’s already been talking to one donor bank that performs up to 50,000 semen analyses per year, and is understandably excited to be able to provide a low-priced device that enables users to test themselves at home and make a decision about donating once it’s complete.

Researchers tested the device using 350 semen specimens at the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center. To test his fertility, a man produces a sperm sample, and places it on a disposable device, which connects to the smart phone. “All the analysis can be performed on the phone”.

The sperm counter uses a tool common to many smartphone applications – a camera. “More than 40 percent of infertile couples have difficulty conceiving due to sperm abnormalities and this development will provide faster and improved access to fertility care”. Products like SpermCheck, FertilMARQ, and Trak are all FDA-approved, but they only analyze how many sperm cells are in the semen.

A debate has raged for decades over whether male fertility is declining, according to some analyses of studies from recent decades.

For this test, it is sufficient to carry out six very simple operations which make it possible to measure the concentration of the sperm, its mobility and the total number of spermatozoa.

Researchers have developed an affordable smartphone attachment and app that is able to detect abnormal samples of men’s squiggly little troops with 98 percent accuracy in seconds. After a vasectomy, men had to return to the hospital a couple of times after the procedure to test their semen. On top of this, many men feel uncomfortable about going to get tested because of social stigma. It returns accurate results in under five seconds, and could eventually be priced in the range (it has yet to receive Food and Drug Administration clearance, although the researchers say they plan to pursue it).