FluidAI Medical: Smarter, Safer and Less Costly Postoperative Care

At St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto, surgical patients are recovering with the care of their medical teams, and with the silent assistance of an AI-powered device monitoring their progress in real time. In the west end of the city, at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, other patients are starting to be discharged not because they’ve fully recovered from surgery, but because they can now finish healing at home, safely monitored by a digital system developed by FluidAI Medical.

What began as a graduate research project driven by one founder’s family conversations has evolved into a trailblazing medical technology (medtech) company at the forefront of AI-powered postoperative monitoring. Founded in Kitchener, Ontario, in 2014, FluidAI is rewriting the rules of surgical recovery with an AI-powered platform that provides real-time risk assessments and clinical decision support for surgeons to get ahead of postoperative complications.

From Childhood Concerns to Global Trailblazing

FluidAI’s origin story begins with its CEO and co-founder Youssef Helwa, whose mother is a surgeon in the Middle East. “He used to hear stories at the dinner table about how patients would receive treatment, but there was always anxiety around their postoperative condition,” explains Dr. Mustafa Obeidat, who leads business development and clinical advisory at FluidAI. “Would they recover smoothly, or suddenly deteriorate?”

This uncertainty, especially around complications such as anastomotic leaks — a life-threatening condition where surgical connections in the digestive tract fail — was the spark. On average, 8% of surgeries experience leaks, but this can spike to as high as 30% in more complex procedures. The condition also comes with a concerning average mortality rate of 12%. For every 1,000 patients undergoing colorectal surgery in the United States, anastomotic leaks add an extra 9,500 days of hospital care and impose an average additional cost of about $50,000 per affected patient.

Helwa, along with co-founders (and fellow University of Waterloo grads) Amr Abdelgawad and Abdallah El-Falou, began developing a predictive tool that could catch leaks before symptoms appear. Their prototype, eventually named Origin, attaches to a surgical drain and continuously analyzes biomarker data in fluid, offering real-time insights that previously took days to surface through traditional diagnostics.

15% Prevention increase in surgical mortality cases

8% – 30% Less surgeries that experience anastomotic leaks

$50,000 Average cost of patient with an anastomotic leak

1.5 – 4x Associated Costs of additional treatments following complications

Credibility Through Collaboration

Early success in clinical feasibility gave the FluidAI team a vital confidence boost. “Once we had lab-grade results proving it worked, we could go to commercial and hospital partners and say, ‘Look, this is real,’” Obeidat says. While the first market for Origin was the Middle East, the company was eager to expand in Canada. That’s when DIGITAL entered the picture. “Through DIGITAL’s support, we went from being a one-product company to being part of a much bigger story,” says Obeidat. “They helped us connect with major partners and create consortiums we never could have built on our own.”

One such consortium was in the ‘Continuous Connected Patient Care’ (CCPC) project, led by Medtronic Canada and supported by DIGITAL. It brought together FluidAI, CloudDX, Excelar Technologies and others to create a comprehensive digital monitoring platform that allows patients to recover at home while being continuously monitored for vital signs and medication adherence. FluidAI contributed its Origin device and Stream Platform to track wound fluid biomarkers, a critical function for post-op safety.

From Hospital Recovery to Home Monitoring

The CCPC laid the groundwork for FluidAI’s next step: leading the Postoperative Patient Management Platform (PPMP), another initiative guided and supported by DIGITAL. This initiative builds AI models to detect leaks, respiratory depression, sepsis, pneumonia and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). “These complications aren’t just dangerous, they’re also very expensive,” Obeidat says. “One missed complication can mean tens of thousands of dollars in extra hospital costs.”

By integrating electronic health records, wearable sensors, and AI algorithms, FluidAI’s system enables clinicians to act before symptoms arise. “Instead of waiting for a CT scan after a patient spikes a fever, we can now spot changes in biomarker trends and raise a red flag much sooner.”. Perhaps most significantly, the new platform is paving the way for home-based recovery. “Being able to send a patient home without compromising safety is the holy grail,” Obeidat says. “It frees up hospital beds and puts patients in a more comfortable healing environment.”. FluidAI recently reached a major milestone in this area by enrolling its first patient in a take-home monitoring program at Toronto-based Unity Health, enabled by the CAN Health Network.

Commercialization Challenges and the Road Ahead

Despite these advancements, commercial adoption remains elusive. “Our solution offers long-term cost savings, but with many hospitals running deficits the biggest challenge is de-risking that initial investment for them,” Obeidat explains, adding that DIGITAL is playing a crucial role there too. “Helping hospitals reduce the risk associated with adoption closes that critical gap between validation and full commercialization.”. With support from well-known partners such as the Mayo Clinic and continued investment from DIGITAL — FluidAI raised $15 million in Series A funding in 2023, all of which are helping to position the company for global deployments. At the same time, FluidAI has steadily grown its presence in Canada, expanding its office and manufacturing operations in Kitchener-Waterloo.

“Being part of DIGITAL’s model changed everything for us. We were able to explore use cases for our technology we never would have tackled alone, like home-care monitoring. It wasn’t even on our radar as a near-term goal until this partnership made it possible.” – Dr. Mustafa Obeidat

Get in Touch

Interested in learning more about how DIGITAL can help support your Canadian health technology or connect you to Canadian solutions providers? Get in touch with Jesse Coleman, Manager of Health Programs today!