Professor James Raymer will be working with Associate Professor Georgina Chambers, Director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit at the University of New South Wales, and other colleagues on a new NHMRC grant on ‘Accountable fertility treatment: An evidenced-based framework for the provision of cost-effective, patient-centred fertility treatment in Australia’.

The three year project was awarded $423,312 and will start in 2016.

One in six Australian couples experience infertility. This is likely to worsen with trends such as delayed childbearing and rising obesity. Despite the use of fertility treatments doubling in Australia over the last decade there has been a lack of considered analysis of the economic implications of Medicare funding of treatments, such as IVF. This research will develop a framework that will be used by policy makers to support cost-effective and patient-centred fertility treatment in Australia.