DIXON, Ill. — An at-home insemination kit invented by a couple from Dixon, IL, has just been cleared by the FDA, making 'PherDal' the country's first and only FDA-cleared sterile at-home fertility kit.
News 8 first met Dr. Jennifer Hintzsche and her husband, Ryan Westphal, in December of 2022 as they were working through the government's approval process. It was all for their invention: PherDal.
The device's patented technique is a two-step process. A sperm sample is placed into PherDal's small, sterile jar. Then it's pulled up into the kit's syringe. From there, it's like putting in a tampon.
PherDal places the sperm sample at the opening of the cervix, which is about an inch lower than typical intrauterine insemination techniques.
Each kit comes with three jars and syringes. The entire process can be done at home without involving anyone else.
After shipping out 200 proof-of-concept kits throughout 2022, Hintzsche and Westphal know of 25 babies that have been born after using PherDal.
But the very first PherDal baby hits close to home for the device's inventors.
Hintzsche and Westphal spent the first part of their marriage unsuccessfully trying to have children. The couple were finally diagnosed with "unexplained fertility," at which point their insurance no longer helped with their pregnancy journey.
It's a common issue for couples looking for fertility help.
One of the most common avenues for treatment is in vitro fertilisation. Just a single IVF cycle can range from $15,000 to $30,000.
"We went into this appointment with all of this hope," Hintzsche said during our 2022 interview. "And we came out with a loan application for $10,000 and a treatment plan when they didn't know what was wrong."
That's when the two decided to put their STEM backgrounds to use and come up with a device on their own. Several years later, PherDal was born, and by September 2018, Hintzsche and Westphal's daughter Lois was born.
"I didn't know what it was like to be a mother," Hintzsche cried in our 2022 interview, "and then when I held my daughter, I just wanted to be able to give that to other people."
Hintzsche joined The Current on News 8 shortly after her FDA clearance to discuss what the milestone means for PherDal and the families it's trying to help build. You can watch the full interview in the above video, and check out our full story on PherDal's founding here.
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