Increasing Demand for Fertility Treatments In a new report, BCC Research estimates 2017 US fertility market revenues were $3.6 billion, increasing to $4.5 billion by 2022, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6%. Key factors are the increasing age of first-time mothers and more single mothers. Other factors include increasing rates of obesity, which negatively affect both men’s and women’s fertility, and more marriages in the LGBTQI community. Assisted reproductive technology (ART) accounted for 70% of the market during 2016. More employers, including Google, Apple, Facebook and Salesforce, are offering fertility treatment as a healthcare benefit to attract highly qualified workers.

Low Birth Rate Factors In the US, only 1.5% of babies born are from in-vitro fertilization (IVF), compared to 4% for Australia, resulting in approximately 7 million infertile American women being underserved. Large start-up costs and a lack of specialists limit the number of clinics. Other than a limited number of IVF clinics, large costs and lack of insurance coverage prevents many women from seeking fertility treatments. It costs $12,000 to $15,000 per cycle for IVF, not including medications, testing and ancillary costs. Now, younger women are beginning to freeze their eggs, beginning at age 27, on average. Experts expect even younger women, in their early to mid-20s, to begin freezing eggs.

Patient Insights Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show 50% of ART cycles utilize fresh embryos from non-donor eggs, 38.4% use frozen embryos from non-donor eggs and 11.6% use fresh or frozen embryos from donor eggs.   More than four of ten (41.1%) ART patients are younger than 35%, 20.9% are 35–37, 18.1% are 38– 40 and 19.9% are 40 or older. Approximately 40% of ART-conceived infants were multiple-birth deliveries. Six states (CA, IL, MA, NJ, NY and TX) accounted for almost half (49.5%) of all ART procedures during 2015. Thirteen states had ART-use rates 2X or more the national rate (CA, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VA, DC).

A Look Inside the LASIK Market The number of LASIK procedures, an outpatient surgery to treat nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, reached its peak during 2007, at 1,395,000. They started to decrease significantly during 2008 and reached a low of 596,000 during 2015. Six of ten (61%) of those who had LASIK said they were tired of wearing glasses/contact lenses; 38% said contact lenses were uncomfortable/hard to insert; 24% said glasses were inconvenient for work; and 14% said glasses were thick and unattractive. Most insurance plans do not cover LASIK. Eight of ten people who have had LASIK said they were completely or very satisfied with it. Patients who were nearsighted and who were younger tended to be more satisfied.

Seeing the Market Clearly Global demand for refractive surgery is projected to increase from 3.8 million annual procedures for 2016 to 4.9 million by 2021, a CAGR of 5.5%, and industry revenues will increase from $5.9 billion to $7.6 billion by 2021. Stalling industry growth is the availability of improved glasses and contact lenses and a decreased need for distance vision as people increasingly use mobile devices. Many Millennials cannot afford elective surgery, such as LASIK. Market Scope forecasts the average fees for laser refractive surgery will decrease at a CAGR of 0.2% due to increased competition.

In Search of Patients According to a study from the University of Minnesota, approximately 69 million Americans are candidates for refractive surgery because of myopia, 34 million for presbyopia and an additional 15 million because they are hyperopic. The average age of the myopic candidate is 40 and the average age for the hyperopic candidate is 55. Because few insurance companies cover LASIK, the market is closely tied to the short-term economic health of the country. The most common methods to market LASIK are newspaper advertising, seminars, Websites and radio advertising. More than half (52%) of surgeons report spending less than $100 per procedure for marketing, and 42% just rely on word of mouth.

Advertising Strategies To promote LASIK services, target potential patients who may have a job with safe-vision requirements, vision problems as the result of an injury or accident or if they cannot wear glasses due to allergies or other limitations. Fertility clinics should consider following the lead of Google, Apple and other major employers by contacting local large employers and recommending they include fertility services as a healthcare benefit. Fertility clinics may find early morning news a cost- effective program to reach younger women, especially single, to promote egg-freezing services, so they can focus on their careers and delay motherhood, knowing they have stored eggs.

New Media Strategies Both fertility clinic and LASIK services should proactively ask their patients for online reviews, offering an incentive to participate. Then, direct prospective patients to those online reviews as part of the introductory process. Fertility clinics can encourage new parents to submit their baby photos, which can then be placed into a collage and used on the Website and other digital marketing. Offer prospective fertility patients an online What-to- Expect Webinar, explaining the entire fertility process; a live, online tour of the facility; and a series of short video testimonials to close the Webinar. The video testimonials can be repurposed for social media posts.