Electronic Witnessing

The HFEA Code of Practice requires all fertility clinics to have an effective witnessing system to identify and trace the movement of any gametes and embryos during any clinical or laboratory process to prevent mismatch.

Initially, MFS used a ‘human eye’ double-witnessing procedure which required two staff to verify the identification labels on the dishes or tubes containing any gametes or embryos during a patient’s treatment, for instance, when sperm are placed with the eggs

However, in 2008 MFS introduced an electronic bar code witnessing system to replace the human-eye double-witnessing system as this had been shown to be extremely efficient within the blood banking service.  The electronic ‘matcher’ system generates a unique barcode for every individual patient and couple that is then applied to all dishes, tubes and sample pots which contain their gametes, embryos or blood.  Whenever these samples are used in any procedure, the barcode is scanned and matched against the patient’s notes before the next stage of the process can continue.

An IVF or ICSI cycle incurs an electronic witnessing cost of £40 and IUI cycles and frozen embryo transfers incur a cost of £20.

The electronic witnessing system offers patients increased confidence that their gametes and embryos are safe at all times during treatment and storage at MFS.