A Preliminary Experience of Integration of an Electronic Witness System, its Validation, Efficacy on Lab Performance, and Staff Satisfaction Assessment in a Busy Indian in vitro Fertilization Laboratory

BACKGROUND: Electronic witness system (EWS) is one of the recent advancements in the field of in vitro fertilization (IVF) that uses radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology to monitor all critical work carried out in each stage of IVF procedures cycle. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of the study was validation and integration of electronic witnessing system, assessment of its efficacy on lab performance, and staff satisfaction in a busy tertiary IVF center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study data included analysis of 187 consecutive cycles for installation and validation of EWS. The laboratory outcomes were analyzed for development of good-quality embryos followed up for the pregnancy outcome. RESULTS: A total of 751 RFIG tags were involved with 77 patient-assigned barcodes for the all the analyzed cycles. During validation of EWS, a total of 02 (0.46%) red flags were highlighted by EWS from pre-allocated tags within the frequency range of the reader. The maturation rate (83.1%), fertilization rate (74.3%), cleavage rate (93.5%), day 3 grade-A embryo development rate (64.6%), good grade blastocyst development rate (26.4%) were observed in EWS group that was comparable to other groups with no significant difference (P > 0.005). Frozen embryo transfer of EWS cases observed a clinical pregnancy rate (50.0%) that was higher than other groups though statistically not significant as sample size was small. CONCLUSIONS: Our preliminary study suggests that EWS does not affect the gametes, embryos, and pregnancy rate, however a larger randomized clinical trials should be undertaken to evaluate the safety and efficacy of EWS.