Georgian fertility services operate through several clinical models
Reproductive medicine in Georgia is more varied than the international advertising around surrogacy sometimes suggests. Clinics provide consultations, diagnostic services, IVF, cryopreservation and other reproductive services to their own patient bases. Surrogacy and donor coordination can form part of that work, but they involve additional parties and a different legal relationship. A fertility laboratory, a maternity hospital and a patient-coordination company consequently occupy different positions in the same sector.
Three visible examples help explain the market. ReproART operates as a specialist reproductive centre with a regional branch structure. Zhordania Medical Center presents IVF within a broader medical institution. Chachava combines reproductive services with a maternity hospital and an international coordination offering. Their own public information establishes their advertised services and locations; it does not provide an independently comparable ranking of clinical outcomes. [1] [2] [3]
These different structures affect how a new business can participate. An equipment supplier sells to the clinical operation; a laboratory partner supplies a defined professional service; a facilitator coordinates communication and administration. The company that attracts the enquiry is not necessarily the company that delivers the medical service. That distinction determines which organisation holds the patient relationship, receives payment and retains the clinical record.
ReproART connects Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Batumi
ReproART’s history dates the centre’s opening to July 2012 and identifies Lika Chkonia as its founder. Its first satellite office opened in Kutaisi in February 2014, followed by Batumi later that year. The published model distinguishes Kutaisi’s consultations, examinations and preparation from services requiring attendance at the Tbilisi or Batumi clinics, where the organisation describes embryology laboratory capacity. [1]
This is a concrete explanation of regional service delivery. A clinic can maintain patient contact closer to home while concentrating some functions at a laboratory centre. For western Georgia, Kutaisi and Batumi have different roles within that arrangement. The clinical appointment, the laboratory work and the patient’s travel do not necessarily take place in the same city or under one timetable.
The commercial implication is that a branch need not replicate every facility of the main centre. It can support a continuing relationship through consultations and diagnostics while referring particular services within the network. In return, the network has to make the handover work: the receiving team needs the relevant records, the patient needs clear communication and the operating companies need an agreed division of revenue and responsibility. This is a more tangible regional business model than assuming that every advertised clinic is a full embryology laboratory.
Zhordania and Chachava place fertility within broader healthcare
Zhordania Medical Center lists IVF and cryopreservation alongside reproductive medicine, laboratory, radiology, obstetric and surgical services. Its published address is 33 Ermile Bedia Street in Tbilisi. A broader medical institution can bring several supporting functions into the same organisation, although the availability of a service menu does not establish that every patient will need every service. [2]
Chachava’s Reproductive Health Centre dates its operation to 2013. Its public offer includes IVF and ICSI, egg and sperm donation, surrogacy and international patient coordination within the wider clinic on Merab Kostava Street. The institutional connection with maternity care is commercially significant: the relationship may continue beyond fertility services into pregnancy and birth. The clinic’s advertised packages are commercial offers, rather than substitutes for the legal rules applying to an individual case. [3]
For a business partner, an integrated hospital and a specialist centre create different interfaces. A hospital may have internal departments for functions that another clinic buys externally. An outside laboratory, interpreter or coordinator still needs a clear agreement with the actual contracting organisation. A familiar clinic name is not enough to identify the company responsible for a particular invoice, service or stored record.
Articles 143 and 144 provide the central statutory framework
Article 143 of Georgia’s Health Care Law addresses IVF in infertility and genetic-disease-risk circumstances, using a couple’s or donor’s gametes or embryos with the couple’s written consent. Its surrogacy provision specifically describes a woman who has no uterus and transfer to another woman’s uterus. If a child is born, Article 143 identifies the couple as the parents and excludes parental recognition for the donor or surrogate. Article 144 permits the use of frozen gametes and embryos, with conservation duration determined according to the couple’s wishes under the established procedure. [4]
Those provisions explain why medical services and parentage are closely connected in the Georgian business model. They also show the limits of a casual summary such as “surrogacy is legal in Georgia”. The statutory text contains circumstances and consent requirements. The separate provision concerning donor-sperm insemination of a single woman should not be converted into a general claim about access to every IVF or surrogacy arrangement.
For an operator, the relevant service is therefore described through its actual participants and circumstances. The couple receiving fertility services, the person donating biological material and the woman carrying a pregnancy have different positions. A commercial contract cannot expand a statutory medical ground merely by changing the name of a programme. Individual medical and legal assessment remains part of delivering the service.
Notarial agreements are tied to the creation of the embryo
The civil-registration rules add a particularly consequential timing requirement. Justice Minister Order No448 of 21 October 2019 amended Article 19 of the registration procedure to require the relevant public notarial agreement before embryo creation, subject to the frozen-embryo exception. It identifies different combinations of parties depending on whether both intended parents, one intended parent or neither intended parent supplies the relevant genetic material. The surrogate, couple and any donors must be represented in the agreement appropriate to the case. [5]
Commercially, this makes the notarial stage part of the service sequence rather than paperwork left until the birth. An operator coordinating donors, a laboratory and intended parents has to connect their records at the right point. A document signed after laboratory work has begun cannot simply be assumed to repair a missed requirement. The document’s timing can be as consequential as the names written on it.
The same amendment addresses embryos created at another medical institution: the implantation clinic’s certificate must draw on, and be accompanied by, the document confirming embryo creation. It also generally requires applications from both parents for birth registration, while specifying limited exceptional circumstances. [5] This gives the origin clinic a continuing documentary role even when a different institution provides the later service.
The registration agreement has a one-year couple requirement
Order No598 of 25 August 2020 added conditions for the couple entering the relevant agreement. It describes a man and woman intending to raise the child who have either been married for at least one year or have lived together for at least the preceding year. Cohabitation is evidenced before the notary with appropriate documents, with examples including common-address information, jointly owned property, religious marriage documentation or other evidence. The same order requires the clinic’s implantation certificate to carry a qualified electronic signature or stamp. [6]
The one-year condition belongs in the explanation of the registration mechanism. It should not be reduced to a claim that any two people can sign an agency agreement and obtain a birth certificate. A coordinator’s intake system has to distinguish a marketing enquiry from a case whose medical facts and documents support the proposed legal arrangement. Nationality, family circumstances and the intended destination can introduce further questions that this couple condition alone does not resolve.
Frozen embryos have a specific documentary exception
Order No598 also provides an exception allowing the notarial agreement before implantation rather than before embryo creation for a qualifying cryopreserved embryo. It requires no more than ten years between creation and implantation and a certificate prepared before freezing identifying the couple to be entered as parents after birth. [6]
This is especially relevant where an existing embryo is being moved into a new clinical relationship. The fact that an embryo is frozen does not, by itself, establish that the exception applies. The earlier records determine whether the required history can be demonstrated. Commercially, a receiving clinic can be dependent on documents held by an institution with which it had no previous relationship.
Article 144’s general recognition of cryopreservation and the registration exception answer different questions. One concerns the permitted use of conserved material; the other concerns the timing and evidence used for a later registration. An investor offering storage, transfer coordination or an existing-embryo programme needs to understand both functions rather than treat “frozen embryo” as one uniform service category.
Birth registration connects the medical and notarial record
Article 30 of the Civil Acts Law expressly connects registration of a child born through IVF with that law, the Health Care Law and the procedure established by the Justice Minister. [7] The resulting mechanism brings the medical notice of birth, the relevant clinic certificate, the notarial agreement and the parents’ applications into one administrative process.
Order No541 of 18 May 2020 provides a five-working-day registration period after submission of the required documents and requires the necessary documents within seven calendar days of presentation of the medical birth notice. It also specifies serious consequences where documents or payment are not supplied within the stated period. These are requirements attached to the registration process, not a guaranteed date for completion of every international family’s documentation. [8]
The business consequence is clear: the file has to remain coherent from embryo creation through birth. A spelling difference, a missing origin record or an agreement involving the wrong parties can become an administrative problem at a much later stage. The clinic, coordinator and legal adviser consequently depend on one another’s work. Birth registration is a public authority’s act, rather than an additional product that an agency can issue itself.
Georgian parentage and international recognition are separate matters
The Georgian parentage provision does not itself determine another country’s nationality, passport or recognition rules. A family may need its Georgian civil documents to be translated, authenticated or considered by an authority abroad. Which process applies depends on the destination and the individual circumstances. This is why an international coordination service can involve lawyers or authorities in more than one jurisdiction.
The movement of embryos is another separate matter. A proposed transfer involves the sending institution, receiving clinic, transport arrangements and the documents linking the material to its origin and authorised use. The Georgian registration rules’ treatment of embryos created elsewhere makes that origin record commercially important, but it is not a general import authorisation. Neither a clinic advertisement nor a Georgian company registration establishes blanket permission for every cross-border shipment.
Public discussion of restrictions and reform also needs to be distinguished from an enacted rule. The statutes and published registration amendments cited here provide the basis for this explanation, reviewed in November 2026. They should not be converted into a general promise of access for all foreign clients. The legal basis for a particular service, Georgian registration and recognition abroad remain three distinct questions.
Reproductive material is excluded from the general tissues law
Article 1(5) of Georgia’s Law on the Use of Human Tissues and Cells excludes reproductive tissues and cells, and embryo and fetal tissues and cells, from that law. A general description of tissue-bank regulation therefore cannot simply be applied to an IVF laboratory as though the exclusion did not exist. Equally, the exclusion does not remove the separate healthcare, professional, consent and registration obligations relevant to reproductive services. [9]
For a clinic project, a useful legal description starts with the activities actually taking place: consultations, medical interventions, laboratory work, storage and any additional diagnostics. Incorporating an operating company and authorising the services it provides are different matters. There is no sound basis here for presenting a single generic “IVF licence” as the complete answer for every possible clinic configuration.
The operating business continues long after the first appointment
A laboratory-owning Georgian clinic carries continuing costs that a coordination business does not: specialist personnel, equipment maintenance, consumables, utilities and storage responsibilities remain even between patient visits. A satellite service or referral partnership has a different cost structure because another organisation performs some functions. ReproART’s regional model and the broader hospital models at Zhordania and Chachava illustrate why a national startup-price figure would conceal more than it explains.
Patient coordination adds its own ongoing work. The enquiry may begin abroad, while consultation, clinical services, notarial acts and birth occur in Georgia. Communication must continue across those stages. Accommodation and transport can be sold or arranged alongside the medical relationship, but their supplier and refund terms can differ from the clinic’s. The commercial offer is clearer when the contracting parties and payment obligations are visible.
In a Georgian partnership, the schedule also connects professional and administrative work. A patient attending ReproART’s Kutaisi office may have a later appointment at another branch; a Chachava case may involve reproductive services and a separate maternity episode. Where a notarial act is relevant, its timing has to fit the laboratory record. The relationship can consequently continue across several invoices and operating departments. For the business, a cancellation, a change of clinic or an interruption in travel can leave some services completed and others outstanding. Clear allocation of those existing obligations is more useful than treating the whole relationship as one undivided package.
Outcome reporting also deserves precision. A clinic’s pregnancy figure, a laboratory measure and a live-birth measure describe different results; their denominators and patient groups can differ. Without comparable definitions, an agency’s percentage is unsuitable as a market-wide benchmark or a promise to an individual. A serious Georgian operator can explain its services and institutional responsibilities without presenting a medical outcome as a guaranteed retail product.
MarketEntry assists fertility-sector investors and operators with Georgian company structures, counterparties and commercial arrangements, working alongside the relevant medical and legal professionals. Our existing specialist resource remains available at IVF and surrogacy services. For a clinic, laboratory partnership or coordination business, contact us to discuss the proposed operation.