Doctors at Dubai’s Fakih IVF performed the procedure on a 32-year-old man
For the first time in the UAE, and in the Middle East as a whole, doctors have used an AI-assisted sperm detection tool to locate extremely rare sperm, and bring about pregnancy in a couple via IVF treatment.
Doctors at the Dubai-based Fakih IVF conducted the procedure on a 32-year-old man with Non-Obstructive Azoospermia (NOA), the most severe form of male infertility, and his wife is now 14 weeks into a normal, healthy pregnancy. The cutting-edge tool – called SpermSearchAI – was developed by NeoGenix Biosciences, an Australian company with which the clinic has an on-going collaboration.
The young couple were, in fact, the first on whom the new technology was trialled at Fakih IVF. “We informed them about the AI software coming, so they actually postponed their surgery, and waited for SpermSearchAI to get involved,” says Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, consultant urologist at Fakih IVF, Dubai. “I’m very happy it got utilised in their case and proved to be useful.”
The procedure in such severe forms of male infertility – where very few sperm are produced, and there are none at all found in semen analysis – is MicroTESE (Microsurgical Testicular Sperm Extraction), a biopsy where testicular tissue is extracted, and then studied under a microscope in the laboratory to find viable sperm. This is where SpermSearchAI, a convolutional neural network trained to detect live sperm in real time, proves invaluable.
“In the patients that we’ve treated so far, the software has reduced the search time by 50 per cent,” says Dr. Ramasamy. “It’s also helpful in identifying more viable sperm. If the embryologist is able to find, say, five to 10 sperm manually, the AI is able to find us about 20 to 30, so our options of using better-quality sperm with IVF has improved dramatically.”
The AI tool is currently being trialled at clinics globally to bring hope in such cases, but it is of particular significance in this region, according to Dr. Ramasamy.
“Unlike the US, Europe, Australia or India, there are no donor sperm options here in the Middle East,” he says. “Therefore, we need technologies like this in the laboratory to find those rare sperm, and give the option of parenthood – not just biological parenthood, but parenthood – to these couples.”
This article originally appeared in the Gulf News. You can find it here.
Forty per cent of UAE workers are already using Generative AI, and nearly 80 per cent believe that AI will bring more productivity to the workplace.
These were among the findings of research done in the region by Salesforce, the global leader in AI Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and highlighted recently at its annual Salesforce World Tour Essentials Dubai event held at Madinat Jumeirah.
This enthusiasm for the latest generation of AI and cloud-based technology was amply evident at the event, which was packed with over 2,000 customers, partners and associates, including senior attendees from government, retail, real estate, energy, and banking sectors in the region.
It’s also clear from the scale of Salesforce’s investments in the region – according to IDC estimates. The company will generate more than $5.1 billion in net new business and create more than 21,800 jobs in the UAE by 2028, fuelled by AI-powered cloud solutions.
“This is a testimony to the importance and visibility of the region to our company,” says Thierry Nicault, Area Vice President, Middle East, Salesforce. “Our team is growing here locally, we are expanding our presence, and there is a huge growth in our ecosystem.”
Image credit: Gulf News
Einstein 1
At the heart of this growth is the newly launched Einstein 1 platform, which embeds Generative AI into workflow processes across all Salesforce applications, including sales, service, marketing, ecommerce and analytics. Data, of course, is at the centre of this revolutionary technology – specifically Data Cloud, a platform that creates a holistic customer view by integrating reams of organisations’ existing, disconnected data, and fuses it with Generative AI to improve both customer engagement and employee productivity.
“Seventy-one per cent of companies in the enterprise space have siloed data, on lots of different systems and models, spread across old and new systems. Einstein 1 allows you to ensure that this data will be actionable in your business,” says Nicault. “The key part is that we’re using Gen AI on your company’s grounded data, which you have built for the past few decades and spent millions to maintain, and not on internet or public domain data.”
The company has agreements with leading data providers such as Snowflake, Google Cloud, AWS, MS Azure, and Databricks to allow such integrations securely. This goldmine of company-specific data combined with Generative AI allows the seamless automation of processes, and the reduction of repetitive tasks which, Salesforce research shows, takes up 62 per cent of employees’ time at present.
“The result is a combination of improved employee productivity and better customer service, bringing a lot of value in terms of the ability to decrease costs while increasing customer satisfaction,” Nicault says.
Making a mark in the Middle East
This increase in efficiency and productivity is the reason for the rapid adoption of such AI and cloud technology in the region, since it matches the UAE’s ‘growth mindset’, explains Nicault.
“The government’s vision to build this country as an economic, tourist and cultural destination is absolutely amazing. Our cloud and AI-powered CRM solutions support this because they are effective across sectors including travel, retail and real estate, and it’s starting to pick up very nicely in healthcare and banking, and the public sector,” he says, adding that local case studies have shown that the platform brings about steady growth without organisations having to increase their workforce thanks to improved productivity.
Need for training
The issue, of course, is that such assimilation of evolving technology can bring with it a skills gap, and according to Salesforce’s research, employers in the UAE have some work to do. Findings show that 52 per cent of workers have not been trained to use Generative AI, and 64 per cent say that employers haven’t set any guidelines for Gen AI usage.
This mismatch between the use of AI and training in AI is among the reasons why Salesforce places such an emphasis on training and education, as demonstrated by its 35 per cent increase in partner certifications and its support for technology skills in the region. “Our job has always been to help democratise technology,” says Nicault. “One way we do that is through our free training website, Trailhead, which allows anybody to learn in-demand skills, earn credentials, and connect to opportunities. The second thing is that we have specific programmes and regular workshops to help our partners up-skill. And thirdly, we are engaging with external organisations and associations such as ArabiaForce Academy, which helps to upskill the Arabic-speaking world.”
It’s also why the company is taking a leadership role in AI through Einstein Trust Layer, a robust set of features and guardrails that protect the privacy and security of organisations’ data, improves the safety and accuracy of their AI results, and promote the responsible use of AI across the Salesforce ecosystem.
“We have taken time to ensure that our Gen AI features and services are accurate and safe to use,” Nicault says. “We may not be seen as the fastest innovator in AI, but we do it fast in the most secure way possible.”
This article originally appeared in Reach by Gulf News. You can find it here
Divya Kumar 