Secure IVF Storage: Introducing the tomorrow machine at Infertility Center of St. Louis

In this brief video, Dr Sherman Silber reassures patients that the Infertility Center of St. Louis offers the safest cryogenic storage available for embryos, eggs, sperm and ovarian tissue. Conventional IVF labs often rely on decades-old liquid-nitrogen tanks that open with simple lids; by contrast, Silber’s clinic uses an FDA-approved “tomorrow machine” that combines biometric security, multi-step identity confirmation and automated robotics.

The moment tissue enters storage, it is assigned a unique digital profile tied to the patient’s name and birth date. Access begins with iris recognition: staff cannot even open the vault without a positive eye scan that matches their authorized profile. Next, they must enter a secure password, followed by the patient-specific identifiers. Only after all credentials align will the system locate and eject the single tray that contains that patient’s specimens, submerged in liquid nitrogen at –196 °C. This design eliminates two critical risks—sample mix-ups and sample loss—because no human can touch or view another patient’s material during retrieval.

Dr Silber emphasizes that skilled embryologists still monitor every stage, providing an essential “human layer” of vigilance. Yet if a technician were ever to click the wrong file or mis-tabulate a label, the machine’s software would refuse to proceed, blocking errors before they occur. The vault also logs each interaction with time stamps and operator IDs, creating an immutable audit trail for FDA inspectors and future chain-of-custody verification.

Because this biometric, password-protected system remains the only cryostorage platform fully cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silber asserts that patients can entrust their reproductive cells with complete peace of mind—immune to publicity-driven fears, mechanical failures or human mistakes.