PGD, or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, is the process of testing embryos for genetic diseases prior to in-vitro fertilization. Pretty cool, huh?

Open-clinica is a great open-source software application that can be used to organize individual studies being conducted in many centers by multiple clinicians.

After reviewing their website, I have the following comments:

1. I like their “study management” section. In this section, study directors delineate what information they want to collect and the inclusion/exclusion criteria for study subjects. Here, directors also select/eliminate individual researchers and study sites. It also allows study directors to view data collected by specific researchers.
2. On the other hand, I am not a big fan of the “data submission” section. This portion of the software is very confusing and over-done. I like the idea of having separate pages for each patient/subject entered. However, there should not be separate pages for each event that occurs to each patient. It would be much easier if every subject had one page with various blanks to fill in. It might be nice to also have a “comments” section on each subject site where researchers could add in a comment on a specific patient if they wanted to.
3. I like the “extract data” section. This section allows a director to identify which data points she wants to compare at any given time, thus allowing her to analyze diffrent parameters of the study separately.
4. I like the login and user profile pages. This is a good way to ensure the integrity of the site. By viewing each others’ CVs on the site, researchers can feel more comfortable about sharing ideas with people they have only met online.
5. When I tried to download the demonstration, it wouldn’t work and it filled my computer screen with strange symbols. I had to shut the computer down to get rid of it. They are using Windows Media Videos (wmv), which won’t work on a Macintosh. MPEG would have been a better choice, as that will display on any platform. In general, I think that open clinica is a great piece of software with the potential to bridge geographical obstacles to conducting research. Once it is recognized, I think it will be well-received in the medical community.
   

It’s hard to become a fertility doctor these days… In order to treat women with infertility, a doctor must graduate from medical school, complete a 4-year residency in Ob-Gyn, and then go on to a 3-year fellowship in infertility.

These fellowships are highly sought-after and only accept bright, motivated physicians with lots of research experience. So, women can rest assured that reproductive endocrinologists are a unique bunch of highly-trained doctors.

This blog has been started due to many conversations with someone who is currently an obstetrics and gynecology resident and is applying to fertility fellowships after graduation. She is very passionate about the field and to encourage her I’ve setup this blog where she can share her passion with the internet. Just today she told me about how Extend Fertility announced that a baby was born from a frozen egg (aka egg cryopreservation). Pretty amazing!

This blog has been started due to many conversations with my wife, who is currently an obstetrics and gynecology resident and is applying to fertility fellowships after graduation. She is very passionate about the field and to encourage her I’ve setup this blog where she can share her passion with the internet. Just today she told me about how Extend Fertility announced that a baby was born from a frozen embryo (aka Embryo Cryopreservation). Pretty amazing!NOTE: The content on this site is copyright, all rights reserved. It is for novelty use only, if you need medical advice seek the help of a professional.