How to Build A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Software: A 2025 Guide

Just imagine for a moment:

Surgeries for congenital heart defects planned with incredible precision. 

Ventilators designed to deliver the perfect airflow for patients with breathing issues. 

Medical devices that work flawlessly, ensuring the best care for patients across Canada. 

All of this is possible because of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

CFD uses advanced computer simulations to study how fluids, like blood or air, move and interact with their surroundings. 

It helps us predict flow patterns, heat transfer, and other processes in complex systems. For Canadian healthcare, this means creating solutions tailored to the unique needs of our patients and healthcare providers.

For example, CFD can simulate blood flow in arteries to help surgeons plan life-saving procedures with confidence. It can also guide the design of ventilators to ensure optimal care for respiratory patients, especially during critical times like flu season or a pandemic.

This blog is your guide to developing custom CFD software for healthcare in Canada. 

Whether you're a cardiologist improving patient outcomes or a medical device innovator bringing new ideas to life, we’ll show you how CFD can help you make a difference. 

Why Healthcare Needs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Software

CFD isn’t just a fancy tool for engineers. It’s already making a real difference in healthcare. Let’s look at how it’s transforming various fields:

1. Cardiology

• Understanding Blood Flow: CFD can simulate blood flow in the cardiovascular system. This helps spot blockages, aneurysms, or other issues, making diagnosis and treatment planning much easier.
• Improving Catheter Design: By testing fluid flow in catheters virtually, engineers can refine designs. For example, a diagnostic catheter with 10 irrigation holes was optimized using CFD. The result? A near-perfect flow balance with less than 2% variation.
• Helping with Heart Surgeries: At Boston Children’s Hospital, engineers use CFD to simulate blood flow in children’s hearts with congenital defects. For one patient, they ran 80 simulations to find the best surgical approach. That’s the precision CFD brings to life-saving procedures!

2. Respiratory Medicine

• Understanding Lung Diseases: CFD models airflow in the lungs. This is especially helpful in studying conditions like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
• Designing Better Ventilators: Simulating airflow in ventilators helps engineers optimize their design. This ensures safe and efficient oxygen delivery to patients who need respiratory support.

3. Medical Device Design

• Dialysis Machines: CFD improves fluid flow and heat management in dialysis machines, making treatments more comfortable and effective for kidney patients.
• Drug Delivery Systems: Simulations analyze how drugs release and spread in the body. This helps design more targeted and efficient delivery systems.
• Tissue Cutting Devices: In one study, CFD revealed overheating at the tip of an ultrasound-based cutting device. Fixing this early prevented device failure and ensured patient safety.

Why Traditional Methods Fall Short

Traditional design relies heavily on physical prototypes, which have their limits:

• High Costs: Building prototypes and testing them is expensive.
• Time-Consuming: Physical testing can delay development.
• Limited Insights: Prototypes might not show the full complexity of fluid flow in biological systems.

How CFD Solves These Problems

CFD offers a faster, smarter, and cost-effective way to design medical solutions:

• Virtual Prototypes: Create and test designs virtually, saving time and money.
• Detailed Data: Simulations provide in-depth insights into fluid flow and heat transfer that physical testing might miss.
• Faster Design Changes: Engineers can test and improve designs quickly in a virtual environment.

By embracing CFD, healthcare professionals and innovators can design better medical devices, improve treatments, and ultimately provide better care for patients. The future of healthcare design starts here!

Benefits of Developing Customized CFD Software

While there are general-purpose CFD tools out there, building customized software for healthcare offers unique advantages. Here’s why it’s worth considering:

1. Improved Accuracy and Precision

Off-the-shelf software might not fully capture the details of your specific medical devices or processes. Customized CFD software can model the exact geometry, materials, and conditions you need.

• Better Device Performance: Accurate simulations help design devices that work flawlessly. For example, CFD was used to optimize a diagnostic catheter’s irrigation holes. The result? Fluid distributed evenly with less than 2% variation.
• Safer Medical Devices: Custom simulations can highlight risks early. Take the ultrasound-based tissue cutting device as an example. CFD revealed overheating at the tip, which could’ve caused safety issues. Fixing it early made the device safer and more effective.

2. Faster Development Process

CFD simulations can speed up your product development and reduce costs.

• Optimize Early: You can test and tweak multiple designs virtually before building physical prototypes. For instance, iterative CFD simulations improved both a diagnostic catheter and an Hba1c diagnostic machine, cutting development time significantly.
• Save on Prototyping Costs: Fewer physical prototypes mean big savings in materials, manufacturing, and testing.

3. Boost Innovation

Custom CFD software enables healthcare innovators to explore groundbreaking ideas.

• Explore New Designs: Simulate a wide range of designs and concepts to create truly innovative devices.
• Faster Breakthroughs: Testing ideas in a virtual environment accelerates the creation of solutions for unmet clinical needs.

Case Study: Enhancing Pediatric Heart Surgery with CFD at Boston Children's Hospital

Boston Children's Hospital has revolutionized pediatric heart surgery by implementing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for preoperative planning. This technology enables the surgical team to simulate blood flow in 3D, improving decision-making and surgical outcomes for complex congenital heart disease cases.

Challenge

Pediatric heart surgeries have traditionally relied on the surgeon's judgment, often leading to revision surgeries. Predicting how surgical patches affect blood flow has been difficult.

Solution

By using CFD software, the team can run multiple simulations to determine the best surgical approach before the operation, ensuring better long-term outcomes. This precision has reduced the need for revision surgeries.

Impact

Parents now see 3D heart models and flow simulations, improving their understanding and confidence in the surgical process. The time to create simulations has been reduced from two months to three weeks, with plans to shorten this further.

5 Key Features of Medical CFD Software for Canadian Applications

In Canada’s healthcare environment, CFD software must meet specific needs to improve patient outcomes and support innovation. Here's what matters most:

1. Accurate Simulations for Complex Cases

The software should accurately model fluids like blood or air within the body. It must handle complex anatomy and physiological dynamics, such as blood flow variations.

2. Intuitive and Accessible Design

CFD tools should be user-friendly for healthcare professionals without technical expertise. Features like pre-built templates and drag-and-drop options simplify simulations.

3. Compliance with Canadian Standards

The software must align with Canada’s privacy and healthcare regulations, such as PIPEDA and standards for medical device safety. This ensures security, reliability, and patient trust.

4. Integration with Canadian Healthcare Data Systems

CFD tools should connect seamlessly with local systems like EHRs and imaging platforms (e.g., PACS).

• Example: A Vancouver surgeon can integrate MRI data to simulate a patient-specific cardiovascular procedure, optimizing outcomes.

5. Adaptable for Research and Clinics

• CFD software should support both advanced research and practical clinical use.

7 Simple Steps to Build CFD Software for Healthcare

Building CFD software for healthcare requires a step-by-step approach to ensure it’s both effective and user-friendly. Let’s break it down:

1. Define Objectives

Start by defining the specific healthcare needs your software will address. This could include:

• Designing and optimizing medical devices like catheters or ventilators.
• Modeling processes like blood flow in the heart or airflow in the lungs.
• Planning complex surgeries, such as those for congenital heart defects.
  Having clear goals from the start will help guide the development process.

2. Gather Requirements

Understand what’s needed to make the software work in healthcare. Talk to:

• Healthcare professionals: Surgeons, clinicians, and engineers to understand their needs.
• Data sources: Analyze existing data (like EHRs) to understand what needs to be integrated.

For example, if you’re developing software for pediatric heart surgery, you need to know about the imaging data and surgical procedures.

3. Design the Architecture

Choose the right tools and platforms for your software:

• Programming languages: Choose languages that support CFD simulations (like C++ or Python).
• System requirements: Decide which operating systems (Windows, Linux) and hardware (CPU, memory) to use.
• Cloud platforms: For scalability and easy access.

4. Develop Algorithms

Create the CFD models and algorithms for your healthcare application.

• Select the right solver: Pick the most suitable method for CFD simulations (e.g., finite volume method).
• Develop algorithms: For mesh generation, boundary conditions, and visualization.
  Accurate algorithms are key to getting reliable results from your simulations.

5. Ensure Compliance

Make sure your software meets healthcare regulations for privacy and safety.

• PIPEDA/HIPAA compliance: For patient data privacy.
• FDA regulations: For medical devices.
• Security measures: To protect sensitive data.
  Compliance is crucial for patient safety and building trust in your software.

6. Conduct Rigorous Testing

Test your software thoroughly to ensure it works as expected.

• Compare results: With real-world data or benchmarks to check accuracy.
• User testing: Involve healthcare professionals to evaluate usability.
  Testing helps refine the software and ensures it provides valuable clinical insights.

7. Deploy and Maintain

Once the software is ready, deploy it securely and efficiently.

• Provide support: Offer ongoing technical support to resolve any issues.
• Regular updates: Continuously add features and improvements.
  Effective deployment and maintenance ensure long-term user satisfaction and success.