Placing families at home
Domestic surrogacy at scale, without losing track when you add a second coordinator.
Most domestic agencies work in one jurisdiction, with an escrow agent, a reproductive attorney and two or three clinics they know well. Nothing about the process is exotic. What breaks is scale: the second coordinator, the twentieth family, the phase nobody is watching. This page is what Carme does about that, and what it leaves alone.
What we watch for
Five things that go wrong quietly, in one jurisdiction.
Applicants who go cold
A surrogate applicant who hears nothing for ten days applies somewhere else. She is not lost to a competitor with a better programme; she is lost to whoever answered first.
What the platform does
Every enquiry, from intended parents or surrogates, has an owner. If one sits untouched for five days, its owner gets an email, so the front of the pipeline is a list rather than an inbox.
Screening that stalls
Medical clearance, psychological evaluation, background check, insurance review: a checklist per surrogate, with the supporting documents and their expiry dates attached.
What the platform does
Give a document an expiry date and it turns amber 30 days before it lapses, on the documents list and on the journey map (Constellation), then red once it has. A lapsed clearance costs a cycle rather than a phone call.
Matching you have to defend
Proposals go out, both sides answer, and some matches are declined. The reasoning is the part that evaporates first, and it is the part somebody asks about later.
What the platform does
Proposals, both answers and declined matches stay on the record, with the reason where one was given. Six months on you can show how the decision was made.
Legal that eats a month
Pre-birth order, agreement drafts, a signature that sits for a week. Everyone suspects which phase it is; nobody has the number.
What the platform does
Each of the twelve standard phases starts with a typical duration. Once five of your own journeys have finished a phase, that phase is measured against your own median instead, so you can see where the time actually went.
Payments that hold a phase
A milestone that has not landed does not announce itself. It just quietly holds up the next step.
What the platform does
A journey step can be tied to a payment milestone: it stays open until the payment is marked received, then ticks itself. Tracked here, never processed here — your escrow agent stays exactly where they are.
What you switch off
The cross-border parts, and how each one goes.
Carme was first built around cross-border work. An agency working in one country does not need most of that, and each part leaves in its own way.
- Trips (itineraries, in-country logistics, arrival dates) is a module. Switch it off and it leaves the navigation and the reports.
- Translation is on request only, unless you turn on automatic translation, so messages arrive in the language they were written in. It disappears entirely only if you switch off AI for your agency, which also turns off the other AI features.
- A second timezone needs no switch. If everyone is in the same zone, appointments show one time; a second line appears only when someone is in a different zone.
- Consulate and exit-paperwork steps are just steps on your journey template. Delete them and they are gone. The journey still ends with the standard Exit phase, holding whichever steps you keep there.
The honest part
What it deliberately does not do.
It does not hold anyone’s money
Payments are tracked against milestones. Escrow, transfers and card handling stay with the people already licensed to do them.
It does not give legal or medical advice
It records what your attorneys and clinicians decide, and tells the right people. It never advises.
It does not put us between you and your families
The portals carry your name, logo and colours, and every email goes out in your agency’s name, with a small “Powered by Carme” line at the foot. Connect your own web address whenever you like. We never contact your families ourselves.
Bring your spreadsheet.
Half an hour, your own caseload, and a straight answer about whether this is worth the disruption. If your current setup is working, we will say so.