Matt Oldakowski 
We’re excited to share that Earflo has been named a finalist in Fast Company’s 2026 Innovation by Design Awards, in the Health & Wellness Design category.
The annual Innovation by Design Awards recognize products, services and experiences that use thoughtful design to address important real-world problems. Earflo was selected as one of three finalists in the Health & Wellness Design category for 2026.
For us, this recognition is particularly meaningful because Earflo has always been as much a design challenge as a medical technology challenge.
Designing ear treatment around children
Earflo was developed to help children with negative middle ear pressure and associated middle ear fluid using a non-surgical approach that can be used at home.
The technology delivers controlled positive air pressure precisely coordinated with a child’s swallow, helping to open the Eustachian tube and equalize pressure in the middle ear.
Behind that simple drinking action is a sophisticated treatment algorithm. As the child swallows, a pressure sensor detects the subtle change in back-pressure created when the soft palate closes. Earflo’s proprietary algorithm then rapidly triggers and modulates the air pump to deliver the required therapeutic pressure within the brief swallowing window, which lasts only around 300 milliseconds. The device also records the pressure profile of each treatment and checks it against clinically validated thresholds to confirm whether treatment was successfully delivered.
But developing the underlying technology was only part of the challenge.
For a treatment to work at home, particularly for young children, it also needs to be something families can realistically use. That meant designing Earflo around the behaviour and experience of children rather than simply making a smaller version of a conventional medical device.
Earflo therefore hides this sophisticated engineering behind a familiar drinking action and an interactive app experience. The product was shaped through close collaboration with industrial designer Lincoln Black at Titan Medical, Rachel Bausor on the app user interface, and Taryn Langlois on graphic design, helping translate the clinical and engineering complexity into an experience that feels intuitive, approachable and designed for children.
The result is a device where the child’s job is deliberately simple (put on the mask and drink normally) while the sensing, timing and pressure control required to deliver the treatment happen automatically in the background.
Why the Fast Company recognition matters
Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards is one of the industry’s most prestigious design competitions. Now in their 15th year they celebrate designers and businesses using thoughtful design to address today’s urgent challenges and anticipate those of tomorrow. The program evaluates design not simply on appearance, but on factors including functionality, impact and how effectively a design addresses the problem it was created to solve.
According to Fast Company, the 2026 honorees were selected by a panel of designers, business executives and Fast Company editors.
Being named a finalist in Health & Wellness Design is therefore an important recognition of the philosophy behind Earflo: medical devices can be clinically purposeful while also being designed around the people who actually have to use them.
“From the beginning, we knew that developing a technology that could help treat middle ear problems wasn’t enough. We needed to design something that children would actually use and that parents could easily incorporate into everyday life. Being recognised by Fast Company for that approach is incredibly meaningful for our team.”
— Dr Intan Oldakowska, CEO and Co-Founder, Earflo
Continuing to improve care for children with ear problems
This recognition comes as Earflo continues its mission to provide families with an earlier, non-surgical option for managing negative middle ear pressure and associated middle ear fluid.
Although Earflo was originally designed around the needs of young children, we are now also seeing adults use the device to manage ear pressure problems. This emerging adult use highlights how the same principles that make Earflo simple and intuitive for children can also make pressure equalization more accessible across a broader range of users.
We’re grateful to the clinicians, engineers, researchers, families and partners who have helped shape Earflo throughout its development. Their feedback has been fundamental to creating a product designed not just to work technically but to work in the real world.
You can see Earflo and the other 2026 Fast Company Innovation by Design Health & Wellness honorees below: