Activ Surgical
The Last Mile of AI-Powered Surgery

Blindspot detection technology in vehicles is nothing short of revolutionary when considering the fact that more than 49 percent of car owners can attest to the alerts preventing crashes in the first 90 days of their purchase. Now, consider a similar ‘blind spot detection’ technology engineered to help surgeons avoid preventable medical errors that could otherwise hinder patients or lead to the loss of life.

With medical errors stated to be the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer, and 400,000 deaths caused every year in the U.S. from avoidable medical complications, technology exists today to help prevent these complications and errors in the OR. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and innovative machine learning (ML) technology, the team at Activ Surgical is devising such solutions that bolster the confidence of both patients and surgeons in receiving the best surgical outcomes. “We are developing solutions that may not only eliminate preventable surgical errors but also democratize surgery across the globe,” begins Todd Usen, CEO of Activ Surgical.

A fundamental principle in surgery involves understanding perfusion, or blood flow, data to ensure a safe operation. Inaccurate assessment of blood flow in tissues can lead to elevated patient readmission rates, increased cost to hospitals, and even higher mortality rates. To aid in preventing such dire issues, Activ Surgical is developing surgical software and tools that will enable compatible minimally invasive surgical systems (laparoscopes, arthroscopes, and robots) to observe and identify anomalies that a surgeon could overlook or not notice. “We make sure that our tools will help surgeons identify key elements during operations and provide critical surgical intelligence,” says Usen.

Activ Surgical’s ActivEdge™ surgical intelligence software platform is being built to be driven by ML to support surgeons with crucial, real-time guidance to help achieve the best outcomes. The goal of the ActiveEdge software platform will be to provide surgical imaging and data analytic capabilities that allow for accelerated data annotation and tissue identification while staying connected to the cloud. As a result, the soonto- be commercially available products built on the ActivEdge surgical platform have the potential to mitigate unintended surgical complications, enhance patient outcomes, and dramatically improve savings to healthcare systems.

Within the ActivEdge surgical intelligence platform is the ActivSight™ interoperable imaging module, which received 510(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration in April 2021. This technology is designed to integrate with already-installed hospital visualization systems to deliver instantaneous, intra-operative visual data and images previously invisible to surgeons, such as real-time perfusion data.

We are developing solutions that may not only eliminate preventable surgical errors but also democratize surgery across the globe

The ActivSight imaging module serves as the “eyes” of the ActivEdge platform. It powers visualization software to allow surgeons to see blood flow in real time, including the company’s initial commercial offering: the ActivInsights software suite.

The ActivInsights™ software suite is a proprietary augmented reality (AR)-based bundle that offers real-time tissue assessment in the form of previously unavailable visual overlays. The ActivInsights enhanced visualization software will provide a visual map of the surgical area, making previously invisible and critical structures visible to surgeons cost-effectively and in real-time. In the coming years, as adoption of Activ Surgical’s technology grows, the potential exists for the additional incorporation of AI- and ML-derived information from tens of thousands of surgical data points to be analyzed and fed into the cloud, which would then allow physicians to identify key anatomical structures during surgeries. Potential capabilities include geofence capabilities to protect critical organs, nerves, arteries, and veins during surgery. To date, 13 major healthcare systems around the world have committed to pilots of the technology. Activ Surgical expects the ActivInsights software to be commercially available to surgeons around the world in 2022 via a technology-as-a-service (TaaS) pricing model that will include the ActivSight intraoperative hardware.

Activ Surgical’s ability to provide actionable, realtime perfusion data to surgeons is game-changing when considering over 50 million procedures—from minimally invasive surgeries to laparoscopic and arthroscopic surgeries—require precise perfusion data to avoid lethal complications, such as anastomotic leaks which are one of the most common and costly complications. “Today, there are no mechanisms that allow physicians to identify blood flow rates after they sew up an anastomosis. Our solutions focus on 11.2 million of the most common surgical procedures and ensure that surgeons have the necessary perfusion data to avoid complications,” Usen explains.

With a highly skilled leadership team possessing a collective medtech experience spanning more than 160 years, Activ Surgical has stayed the course of innovation for over four years. The company’s FDA-cleared technology has paved the way for even healthcare facilities with low capital budgets to seamlessly adapt to their existing scopes and imaging equipment. Once the ActivSight enhanced visualization system is implemented into surgical devices across hundreds of healthcare facilities, the plan is for surgeons to leverage the data aggregated by the AI to better identify nerves, arteries, and other critical structures. Akin to how a smartwatch or a phone may collect data to curate a specific user experience, the ActivSight visualization system plans to collate data from its various surgical applications to expedite the growth of healthcare technology. “We believe we’ve covered the last mile in AI-powered surgical technology,” concludes Usen.