A year of milestones for FluidAI
It’s been a big year for Kitchener-based medtech company FluidAI. In August, the team celebrated FDA clearance for Origin™, a first-in-class continuous pH measurement system for post-surgical drain effluent monitoring that equips clinicians with new data for earlier detection of post-operative complications.
Guen O’Hara, Business Development Manager at FluidAI, says that it was one of the most significant milestones for the company since its founding in 2014.
“We’re all super excited about that. It’s such a huge milestone for the team after years of hard work, development, and testing,” she says.
That milestone capped off a year that also included new manufacturing growth at MIX, international market expansion, and continued innovation of software and AI tools that support clinicians and patients across the entire surgical journey.
Scaling local manufacturing
FluidAI’s growth has also been powered by its ability to scale manufacturing locally.
“Our products are assembled here,” O’Hara explains. “We build everything in-house before shipping to hospitals.”
The company’s space at MIX provides the perfect setup for collaboration and compliance.
“Our space at MIX is ISO 13485 and MDSAP certified,” O’Hara says. “We have our manufacturing on the ground floor, our office space alongside it, and our lab upstairs. It’s a great setup that keeps everyone connected and working together in the same space.”
A proactive approach to post-operative care
FluidAI’s portfolio of solutions is designed to shift the standard of post-surgical care from reactive to proactive. Origin’s technology focuses on identifying complications such as anastomotic leaks before they become critical issues. These leaks are the deadliest post-operative complications following gastrointestinal (GI) surgeries.
“Today’s standard of care is just a wait-and-see game,” she says. “The surgeon’s waiting to see if the patient experiences symptoms, and when these symptoms appear, they’re often non-specific.”
By providing clinicians with real-time data and analytics, FluidAI helps hospitals catch complications earlier, improve patient outcomes, and free up valuable resources.
“Our technology is designed to accelerate the diagnostic and treatment timeline. This could look like surgeons intervening on day 2 versus day 8, like in the standard of care today,” O’Hara says.
Standing apart in the AI era
Long before AI became a buzzword, FluidAI built its identity around data-driven healthcare.
“Our team prides itself on understanding how technology and data can work hand in hand with healthcare providers, augmenting their expertise rather than replacing the human touch in care,” she says.
FluidAI collects continuous, real-time proprietary data that can power deeper clinical insights and more proactive care decisions, building on information that exists in the health record today.
“That sets our algorithms apart, because we’re combining our proprietary data with information from the health record to provide richer clinical context. There’s no platform like it on the market.”
From chemical engineering to business development
O’Hara’s path to leading business development at one of Canada’s top medtech scale-ups began in the lab. She joined FluidAI’s research and development team in 2020 and holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
She credits her transition from R&D to business development to a knack for storytelling. While she enjoyed hands-on R&D work, it was writing technical proposals and grant applications that convinced her to try something new.
“I focused on translating our technical work and showing how our innovations could improve patient lives,” she says. “With my hands-on technical experience, it was exciting to package the strong work our teams were doing at FluidAI and help secure the funding that fuels our continued innovation.”
That combination of technical depth and communication skill now helps her bridge the gap between FluidAI’s technical teams and its investors, funders, and partners.
“I saw all the good work the product team was doing, the clinical team, the R&D team, and being able to support them with the funds they need to keep continuing, growing, scaling—that’s what drives me,” she says.
For O’Hara, working in medtech means balancing innovation with persistence and purpose.
“It takes a lot of hard work, and years of developing and testing, but when you see that your work can change the standard of care and improve outcomes for patients, it’s worth every bit of it,” O’Hara says.
