With its launch earlier this year, FertilityIQ is a site where users review fertility doctors and clinics. Before a review is submitted, members are required to answer a questionnaire and submit proof that they were patients of the clinic they are reviewing.
Jake Anderson and Deborah Anderson-Bialis started FertilityIQ after experiencing setbacks in their own search of fertility clinics.
When Jake Anderson and Deborah Anderson-Bialis set out to find a fertility doctor a couple years ago, they were totally unprepared for how much time and emotion they would spend on their search. Going from doctor to doctor, clinic to clinic, they were stunned at the lack of information available.
“At the end of our saga, we felt that we had to go back and find out a way to help people figure out the good and the bad about fertility treatments,” says Anderson. “We had to do something.”
The couple’s year-long project began with gathering patient reviews of fertility doctors and clinics around the country, then building an online platform to house all the information.
For now, access to the platform will be free and operations will be self-funded by the co-founders. The couple does not intend to charge doctors or clinics a listing fee, as other review sites do, and does not plan to seek ad revenue. “Our goal is to stay small and extremely effective. We’re happy to fund it ourselves,” says Anderson. In the future, it is possible that FertilityIQ will charge a membership fee, he says, but it would be waived in exchange for review submissions.
Anderson says that patients have contributed assessments on 70% of U.S. fertility doctors operating in 90% of U.S. clinics.
As simple and easy to use as it may be, it doesn’t come without its critics. Dr. Michael M. Alper, medical director of Boston IVF and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School believes the site is too new and has a very limited number of doctors reviewed.
“I would not want to choose my doctor based on a website,” said Alper. “If a relative needed cardiac surgery, would you go to a website and choose? It could be very misleading.
“Whoever had the highest numbers had the best quality. But the problem is, you can control your statistics by how you treat and who you treat.”