Interview: Andreia Trigo, Enhanced Fertility. Turning Years of Waiting into Days of Hope

The interview with Andreia Trigo, Founder and CEO at Enhanced Fertility, a startup from Portugal, running AI-driven fertility diagnostics to optimize treatments and improve success rates.

You can listen to the episode with Andreia Trigo on EmpoWomen Podcast:

Or read the interview.

Elevator Pitch

My name is Andreia Trigo. I am a nurse by background and the CEO of Enhanced Fertility. Enhanced Fertility is a full-stack AI platform that automates patient onboarding, diagnosis, and reimbursement coding, speeding up the time to treatment for fertility patients from the current average of three years to less than 30 days. We work with clinics to help their patients get started with treatment much faster and bring their new babies into the world.

What is your personal story behind the startup?

My story started when I was a teenager in Portugal. I was waiting for my period to start, but it never came. After years of doctors telling me to just wait, a series of tests and ultimately a surgery revealed that I was born without a uterus and the top third of my vagina, a condition called MRKH syndrome. It affects about one in 5,000 women.

Being told at 17 that I would never be able to have children was shocking and traumatizing. Infertility is something that stays with you forever, presenting different challenges at every stage of life. As a nurse, I decided I wanted to work in this area. When I started looking at what other women and men go through, I saw that their diagnostic process is also very complex and time-consuming, averaging 3.2 years across Europe. So, I combined my personal story with my clinical skills to find a solution to help them.

How does the technology work?

That long diagnostic journey can be critical, especially for a woman who is 35, as she might be 38 by the time she gets a diagnosis, significantly lowering her chances of success. We use AI and automation to speed up that time.

Clinics use our software to manage their patients. The patient receives a link to answer a series of questions online, which is the clinical history part of a doctor’s visit. They also complete a combination of tests that can be done remotely at home, including finger-prick blood tests and semen analysis for men.

Once the results are back—which takes about 48 hours—our AI model automates the diagnosis for the doctors. It can identify multiple issues at once and creates a doctor’s note with the correct reimbursement codes, saving doctors over an hour of paperwork per patient. This frees them up to see more patients.

What is your business model?

Our business model is B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer). Clinics pay a software license fee based on their size—small, medium, or large. Patients then pay for the specific tests their doctor requests. This is important because patients know they are only doing the necessary tests, and a doctor oversees the results so they aren’t left wondering what they mean. If a patient already has recent test results, they can upload them, and our AI will verify them to avoid repetition.

What markets do you cover?

We are certified as a medical device and our platform is translated into seven European languages. We are available in the UK and across Europe, and we are opening a US lab in a few months. This is crucial because fertility care is not equally available everywhere. Laws and waiting lists vary drastically from country to country, so many patients travel across borders for treatment. Our platform allows clinics to standardize the diagnostic experience for their patients, no matter where they are from.

Has your product evolved since you started?

Yes, definitely. We started with a basic clinical history questionnaire. After validating it with doctors and patients, we realized that many patients couldn’t answer the questions related to blood and sperm tests because they couldn’t access them easily or affordably. That’s when we realized we needed to offer at-home test kits, first in the UK and then across Europe, to solve that bottleneck.

Is this your first venture as an entrepreneur?

No, Enhanced Fertility is my third business. My first was a simulation training center for doctors and nurses that unfortunately was lost during the 2008 financial crash. My second business, which is now 11 years old, is an e-learning and training platform that teaches medical professionals how to administer sedative drugs. It’s quite established in the UK and Ireland. But Enhanced Fertility is the most special to me because of my personal connection to infertility. Our whole team is motivated by making more babies. We have a board in our office where we track how many babies we’ve helped bring into the world—we’re on number 32 now!

Tell us about your team and what inspires you.

We incorporated at the end of 2020 and launched in 2021. We now have eight people on the team, split between the UK and Portugal, with perfect gender parity. What I love is creating something valuable that helps clinics and ultimately creates families. I want to build a long-lasting company that will still be used in 10 years. That’s why we continuously validate every new feature with patients and clinics before we build anything.

How have you funded the business so far?

It was a gradual process. I started the business part-time while still working hospital shifts as a nurse. We got an initial small investment from an accelerator, which allowed us to make our first hire. Then, we received grants from the UK government, which were incredibly important for product development, CE marking, and translations. We also raised money from angel investors last year, many of whom have their own experiences with fertility. And of course, the EmpoWomen grant has been crucial for clinically validating our new AI diagnostic tool. Now, we are raising a round from VCs. It’s a traditional entrepreneurial journey.

What has your experience been with the EmpoWomen program?

I learned about EmpoWomen at Web Summit. What I like about grants is that they force you to have a strict project plan and hold you accountable. The program has been incredibly useful. It funded the clinical validation of our new AI diagnostic tool. We presented our research, which showed that doctors found it easier to diagnose patients with our platform, identified more issues they would have otherwise missed, and did it all much faster. It proves that our tool improves their practice.

What are your next steps?

We are always trying to monetize every part of our R&D. Now that our AI diagnostic tool is validated for hormonal and sperm problems, we need to add more diseases like endometriosis and fibroids, as well as lifestyle-related diagnoses. We also have a lot of documentation to prepare to register it as a medical device. At the same time, we are taking our first steps to enter the US market. That will keep us busy for the next six months.

What is the ultimate dream for Enhanced Fertility?

In the future, I want to see us bring a million babies into the world. For that to happen, we need to be available globally. Fertility is a global issue; most countries are now below replacement rates, and governments are starting to pay attention. There is a cultural shift happening, and I see us playing a big part in that.

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