Sara Okhuijsen is a Dutch scientific entrepreneur and the Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of OASYS NOW, a health-tech start-up that builds privacy-preserving, explainable AI for clinical research and precision medicine. From day one she has anchored the company’s mantra of “patient-first, privacy-by-design” while steering a multidisciplinary team that spans AI, cybersecurity, genomics and clinical practice.

Trained in Nanobiology at TU Delft and Erasmus MC, Okhuijsen’s early research exposed the privacy gaps that slow genomic discovery. That experience fueled her mission to create infrastructure where sensitive health data can be analyzed securely—without ever leaving the patient’s control.

In 2021 she teamed up with Co-Founder & CEO Nima Salami to launch OASYS NOW. The company’s flagship product ELaiGIBLE is an AI Assistant that parses unstructured electronic-health-record text and instantly surfaces trial-eligible patients, saving hospitals thousands of screening hours while giving clinicians full algorithmic explanations. Complementing ELaiGIBLE, she spearheaded CoMPai (Confidential Multi-Party AI)—a federated-learning framework that lets researchers train genomics models across borders without exposing raw DNA data, in collaboration with Genomic and AI Researchers at Erasmus MC and Cybersecurity experts from CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, NVIDIA & Google Cloud.

Okhuijsen’s privacy-centric approach has been widely recognized. In 2024 OASYS NOW won Slush 100, Europe’s most competitive start-up competition, earning a €1 million investment to scale its platform.  The same philosophy impressed the European Lighthouse on Secure & Safe AI (ELSA), which selected OASYS NOW as one of only five industry-call winners for its CoMPai project.  In 2025 Forbes named her to its “30 Under 30 Europe – Science & Healthcare” list, spotlighting her work at the intersection of genomics and trustworthy AI.  That year she also clinched the Women in AI Benelux “AI Entrepreneur Award”, recognizing her leadership in building transparent, secure AI that collaborates—rather than competes—with healthcare professionals.Beyond the lab, Okhuijsen speaks regularly at conferences—from TU Delft’s Nanobiology Symposium to international innovation missions—advocating for ethical AI standards, open collaboration and greater diversity in tech. Her vision is clear: a future where every patient can own their data, researchers can innovate responsibly and AI acts as a trusted partner in delivering equitable, precision healthcare.