Australian firm Presagen has announced an IVF success story with the first baby born globally aided by its artificial intelligence (AI) applied to medical imaging.

Baby Ebenezer is a happy, healthy eight-week-old, and an IVF success story of a new kind. His entry into the world was aided by AI applied to medical imaging.

As an embryo, Ebenezer was identified within his cohort to be the one most likely to result in a clinical pregnancy, and thus was the first embryo transferred to his mother’s uterus. For his parents and their Australian IVF clinic, No 1 Fertility – the first clinic in the world to offer the Life Whisperer technology – this decision resulted in a joyful end to their two-year journey.

While medical advances have improved IVF outcomes, they have added to the already often prohibitive cost of treatment. What is remarkable about Life Whisperer is that it is non-invasive, affordable and requires no additional hardware. It can be universally implemented to offer hope to millions of would-be parents globally.

Using the Life Whisperer embryo assessment programme, the embryologist uploads a single image of each five-day-old embryo in the cycle cohort and within minutes receives a score for each one based on its implantation potential. International clinical studies have shown Life Whisperer is 25% more accurate in assessing embryo viability than assessment by an embryologist alone, and can reduce the time to pregnancy by 15%.

Life Whisperer is the first product by AI healthcare company Presagen, located in Adelaide, San Francisco and London.

“We are so overwhelmed with joy to see our world-first Life Whisperer baby born, and the wonderful impact it has had in helping this couple start a family,” said Michelle Perugini, Presagen’s CEO.

Life Whisperer’s AI programme was trained globally on tens of thousands of embryo images matched with pregnancy outcomes. The AI recognises unknown features and complex patterns, the impacts of which on embryo viability are yet to be fully understood.

“After years of development and testing this technology with IVF clinics globally, it is great to finally see the positive outcomes that AI can have on people’s lives and their health,” said Jonathan Hall, Presagen’s chief scientist.

Life Whisperer is authorised for use in two-thirds of the world’s IVF market, with IVF clinics globally now using it to help their patients conceive.