Melbourne, Australia. March 17th, 2026 – A structural change is taking place at the front door of UK fertility care. For the first time, a leading fertility clinic has redesigned how treatment begins so that both partners in a couple complete clinical fertility screening at home, before attending a first consultation.
Avenues Clinic has partnered exclusively with Sapyen to embed at-home semen analysis for men and at-home Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) testing for women directly into its standard patient pathway.
As part of Avenues’ Reproductive Intelligence Review, couples can now complete baseline diagnostics together from home, arriving at their first consultation with key clinical insights already established.
For many patients who travel from across the UK to access Avenues’ care, particularly those seeking Fair IVF or treatment in clinics without strict BMI thresholds, the model significantly reduces the number of clinic visits required before treatment begins.
The change targets a persistent failure in fertility medicine. Although male factor infertility contributes to roughly half of infertility cases, testing has historically been fragmented, clinic-bound, and disproportionately focused on women.
Men are frequently tested later in the process, if at all, often under narrow time constraints that require rapid in-clinic sample delivery. The consequence is delay, duplication, and decision-making without full information.
Under the Avenues model, couples complete baseline diagnostics together at home. That single change compresses time to clinical insight at the very start of care, removing weeks of logistical friction and shifting the first clinic visit from fact-finding to decision-making.
“The fertility journey shouldn’t start with waiting rooms and logistics,” said Dr Cristina Hickman, CEO of Avenues Clinic. “It should start with understanding. Our Reproductive Intelligence Review allows couples to complete essential diagnostics from home so that when they arrive, the conversation focuses on decisions rather than discovery.”
Sapyen enables this approach through a patent-pending sperm stabilisation technology that preserves semen samples for up to 72 hours after collection, allowing accurate laboratory analysis without immediate clinic delivery. This removes one of the most entrenched barriers to routine male fertility testing.
“Fertility outcomes suffer when the system delays information,” said Ash Ramachandran, CEO of Sapyen. “The question should never be why couples waited months to understand half the equation. Start with data. Reduce uncertainty early. Everything downstream improves.”
Clinicians at Avenues say the shift is poised to change consultations fundamentally, with patients arriving earlier in the pathway already informed by baseline results. This enables earlier planning, clearer conversations, and fewer exploratory appointments driven by missing information.
More broadly, the model reframes fertility as a shared clinical problem from day one. Male fertility is no longer a secondary investigation pursued only after time, cost, and emotional capital have already been expended.
For patients, the impact is not abstract. It means fewer delays, fewer unnecessary appointments, and a fertility journey that begins with evidence rather than iteration. For the system, it represents a reallocation of scarce clinical time away from logistics and toward care.
Quietly, fertility care has been redesigned at the point that matters most: the start.
ENDS