New Internet Tool Offers Previously Unpublished Information on Clinics

The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology has been around for decades. The organization's purpose is, according to SART's immediate past President Dr. Eric Surrey (who is also Medical Director of Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine) , "to set and help maintain the standards of ART in an effort to better serve" both the group's members and their patients. There's been a website representing SART on the Internet for many years now, but the site has recently undergone an overhaul that makes it much more directly beneficial to patients' needs.

With the web building expertise of Dr. Timothy Hickman, Medical Director of Houston IVF in Texas, the SART site now offers prospective fertility patients more than merely information on the professional organization, its goals, and member clinics. Patients can now use the site to easily explore the ART statistics of over 392 U.S. fertility practices.

Beyond a New Look

SART has been the primary purveyor of statistics like these since 1985. Collaborating with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, SART has worked since then to collect data from its member clinics, which currently represent over 85 percent of all fertility clinics in the country. The goal has always been to provide accurate information on ART being performed and its outcomes. These statistics have been available via the CDC's own site. However, the new SART site has a tool unlike any other on the Internet.

For the first time, a patient can input his or her unique diagnosis and come up with a clinic's outcome rates for differing age groups with the same diagnosis. Also premiering is the presentation of statistics for women patients over the age of 42. The CDC does not report outcomes for patients beyond age 42.

One of the drawbacks to the way ART stats have always been collected by SART and published by CDC is that the information has been presented to consumers with several years of delay. The new system -- which allows SART to directly publish clinics' reported data within a few months' time -- will allow anxious patients access to the most updated information sooner.

Helping Patients with More than Medicine

Drawing on his hobbiest skills of web building, Dr. Hickman worked with SART technical staff for three years to bring the new interface to fruition.

"We took much of the content from the former SART site and made it more navigable," says Hickman, who is the official Webmaster for the organization, "and the Outcome Reports tool is unlike anything else available."

Physicians from the IntegraMed network have also helped to load up the new SART site with reader-friendly information on infertility and its treatment. "A Patient's Guide to Assisted Reproductive Technology" is comprised of adaptations of patient handbooks used at the University of Texas Health Science Center and at IVF Florida Reproductive Associates. The step-by-step manual starts with defining the requirements and expectations of an infertility specialist to treatment specifics like medication injection techniques and various ART procedures. Readers can be assured that this basic starter information is medically sound.

Dr. Hickman recently learned that word has started to spread about the SART site and visits have been increasing since the new tool was launched in November 2005. Visit the new, improved website of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology and see for yourself how physicians from all over the country work together to better inform and empower patients.