Kitchener-based A.I. company creating solutions for monitoring surgery recovery and patients

A Kitchener, Ont. company has developed a device that could help save lives as patients recover from surgery. CTV’s Colton Wiens tells us how it works.

A Kitchener-based medical technology company is trying to make after surgery recovery easier for patients and their medical teams.

FluidAI created the Origin device, which monitors patients after general and gastrointestinal surgeries. It can provide early warning signs of anastomotic leakage, a complication that can lead to severe infections and sepsis.

“Early detection of anastomotic leaks can mean the life or death for some high-risk patients. The earlier that you can identify the complication, the larger the time window that allows the surgeon to intervene,” Amr Abdelgawad, FluidAI’s Chief Operating Officer, said.

The device has been tested by a number of international hospitals including Hamilton Health Sciences.

“[In] pancreatic surgery, about 20 to 25 per cent of our patients will have a significant or a clinically relevant pancreatic leak. And of those that have that leak, 20 per cent of them will die.” Dr. Pablo Serrano, a surgeon with Hamilton Health Sciences, told CTV News in February.

Founded by two University of Waterloo students and one Toronto Metropolitan University student, Kitchener-based FluidAI started working on the device more than ten years ago. It’s gone through clinical trials and is now cleared for use in Canada, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and most recently received clearance from the United States’ Food and Drug Administration.

“Our team went from being just a few co-founders who started this business to well over 70 individuals today in the company,” Abdelgawad said.

“It was immensely time consuming. It was a lot of lab work. It was a lot of, just really bringing the team together to get something done like that,” Mya Simpson, a former research and development engineering associate with FluidAI and currently a biomedical engineering student at the University of Guelph, said.

Now that they have clearance in several countries, FluidAI is focused on expanding and getting devices into hospitals.

“It’s just a matter of getting the devices in the field to be utilized by hospitals and clinicians for them to conduct pilots and evaluations. And those pilots and evaluations enable the clinicians to firsthand see the value of the device being used and the impact on the patients,” Abdelgawad said. “Then from there, it’s just a matter of selling.”

Along with the Origin device, FluidAI is also working on a new software known as Stream Care, which aims to incorporate data from patient records, vital signs, and other monitoring devices to allow patients to monitor their recovery as well as giving clinicians a unified view of all relative patient information.

“The software itself relies on integrations with hospitals’ electronic medical records. These electronic medical records provide the patient’s history and medical information that feed into our software and provide risk factors associated with complications beyond anastomotic leaks,” Abdelgawad said.

FluidAI said it’s not aiming to replace medical professionals, but instead, empower them when it comes to making decisions

“At the end of the day, by providing early warning factors and early information that can allow those clinicians to make those decisions faster and better, you improve patient outcomes and you allow patients to get back on their feet quicker,” Abdelgawad said.

FluidAI has relied heavily on government funding and donations, including nonprofit national research organization Mitacs, which helped connect students with FluidAI and supports the company’s growth. Abdelgawad said that funding is crucial to allow MedTech companies to continue their research and develop solutions for the medical industry.