London-based fertility clinic Apricity has appointed gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Luca Sabatini as chief medical officer.

Sabatini has a wealth of clinical and academic experience of reproductive medicine. Since 2011 he has been clinical director of Barts Health NHS Trust Centre for Reproductive Medicine & Surgery and he was the reproductive medicine and surgery clinical lead for the East London Women services, which comprises four satellite units across four large NHS hospitals. He is a Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists accredited training director for reproductive medicine and an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Queen Mary’s, where he has taught since 2008.

Caroline Noublanche, co-founder and chief executive of Apricity said: “We are delighted to have brought Dr Sabatini on board to help shape Apricity with his deep expertise in reproductive medicine, as our virtual fertility clinic grows with new innovative solutions and into new markets. His role as chief medical officer is incredibly important to help us ensure that our treatments and solutions are always ethical, appropriate to the specific patient, and based on the latest clinical evidence. His leadership and management experience in the healthcare industry will be invaluable in providing training and consistency to help us maintain a standard of excellence through our growth, as we expand our clinical team and partner clinics to reach more patients with our treatments.”

Sabatini said: “I have joined Apricity because I truly share the ethos of the founders to find new methods of providing fertility services to patients. Having worked in the fertility field for more than 25 years as a doctor, and having had my own personal experiences as a patient, what has struck me is that the challenges for patients have remained consistent over this time. Patients continue to have difficulty in getting appointments, receiving consistent communication, accessing services, and the success rate has not increased in line with expectations.

“Apricity’s use of technology has the potential to drastically improve the experience of patients. The ability to offer quality service to patients remotely, wherever they are, is incredibly powerful in itself. This, combined with the utilisation of expertise from leading physicians scientists within the application, and the innovative use of data, has huge potential to improve success rates in fertility and the quality of patient care.”