How One Doctor Built New York’s First AI-Driven Fertility Clinic

Dr. Zaher Merhi watched the same story repeat itself throughout his early career. Women in their 30s, healthy and eager to start families, would enter the fertility system and emerge weeks later — exhausted, financially drained, and no closer to answers. The process was slow, expensive, and built around averages rather than individuals. He decided to change it.

The problem with standardised fertility care

Traditional IVF protocols are designed for the average patient — a patient who, in reality, does not exist. Every woman’s hormonal profile and response to medication is unique, yet most clinics begin everyone on identical stimulation doses and rely on subjective visual assessments to select embryos. The pharmaceutical industry has little incentive to fix this; longer, more complex treatment cycles generate more revenue through additional monitoring visits and higher medication volumes.

In 2025, Dr. Merhi began integrating targeted AI tools at his clinic, Aurea Fertility Center, to address these inefficiencies directly. Predictive dosing algorithms now tailor stimulation medications to each patient’s baseline markers, reducing medication waste by over 70%. The EmbryoScope system monitors embryos continuously via time-lapse photography, with an AI model analysing developmental parameters to sc