Electronic Witnessing in the Embryology Lab: A Software Second Check at Transfer and Discard

Some steps in the embryology lab cannot be taken back. Once an embryo has been transferred or discarded, there is no correcting the record by repeating the procedure. That is why labs witness them: a second person checks that the right embryos, from the right patient, are going where they should.

Manual double-checking works, but it depends on two busy people being in the same place at the right moment, and on the paper trail being filled in afterwards. EMBRY adds a software step to that routine: a second, recorded check built into the record itself.

Why witnessing exists

Professional guidance has asked for this for years. The ESHRE revised guidelines for good practice in IVF laboratories (2015) advise a double-check by a second person and/or an electronic identification system at critical steps such as embryo transfer, and say that the identity of operators and witnesses should be documented. In the UK, guidance note 18 of the HFEA Code of Practice sets out how clinics should witness procedures and confirm patient identity.

How each lab meets that guidance is its own decision. What software can do is make the check hard to skip and easy to prove afterwards.

Which steps EMBRY witnesses, and how

EMBRY requires a witness at two steps: embryo transfer and embryo discard. These are the points where a mistake is final.

When the operator records one of these steps, a second staff member confirms it on the same screen by entering their own username and password. The rules behind that are simple:

• The operator cannot witness their own action. The system refuses it and asks for a second person.
• The witness must be a member of staff at this clinic, and accounts with a read-only role cannot act as witnesses.
• Wrong passwords are limited. After five failed attempts, witnessing is paused for that operator for 15 minutes, and each failed attempt is written to the audit log.
• The witness is recorded with the step. The completed transfer or discard carries who performed it and who witnessed it.

Witnessing is on by default. A clinic that runs its own witnessing process can switch the requirement off in its lab settings, and that choice stays with the clinic.

Guardrails around the witness

A witness confirms a step; the record makes sure the step itself makes sense. Several rules apply whether or not witnessing is switched on:

• Embryo states are strict. A transferred or discarded embryo is final and cannot be moved again. A frozen embryo must be thawed in the record before it can be transferred.
• Another patient’s embryos are refused. A transfer or discard can only include embryos that belong to that patient’s case (consented donor embryo allocations are the exception).
• A refused step leaves no trace. Each step is saved as a single unit, so a wrong patient, an illegal move or a failed witness check records nothing at all, rather than half a step.
• Completed steps are locked. Corrections go through Amend, which requires a written reason and keeps the before and after values. Only embryologists and clinic admins can amend a completed step.

A tamper-evident audit trail behind it

Every witnessed step, failed witness attempt and amendment is written to EMBRY’s audit log. The log is append-only and hash-chained: each entry includes a fingerprint of the one before it, so a changed or missing entry breaks the chain, and a built-in verification check finds where it breaks.

That gives a quality manager something concrete to work with. The question “who transferred these embryos, and who witnessed it?” has an answer in the record, not in a binder.

Where it sits next to RFID and barcode systems

Many labs already use dedicated electronic witnessing systems based on RFID tags or barcodes on dishes and tubes. EMBRY does not print labels or read tags, and it is not a replacement for those systems.

It works alongside them. A tag-based system checks the physical dish; EMBRY’s witness step checks the clinical record of what was done with the embryos, by whom, and who confirmed it. Labs that rely on manual double-checking get a recorded second check in the system they already use for the lab record. Labs with a tag-based system get the same check recorded in the patient’s embryology record.

Witnessing is one part of a single record that runs from retrieval to outcome, described in the new EMBRY platform. The same record feeds the one-click clinical reports covered in Automating the IVF Report.

What this means for your clinic

• Embryo transfer and discard need a second person’s own password, so the witness check is part of the record, not a separate form.
• No one can witness their own step, and read-only accounts cannot witness at all.
• Transferred and discarded embryos are final, frozen embryos must be thawed first, and another patient’s embryos are refused.
• Completed steps are locked; corrections need a reason and keep the before and after values.
• A hash-chained audit log shows who did what, who witnessed it, and when.
• It complements RFID and barcode witnessing; it does not replace it.

To see how witnessing fits your lab’s protocol, talk to our team or read more about the EMBRY product.