Activ SurgicalActiv Surgical said it is launching ActivEdge, an artificial-intelligence and machine-learning platform designed to improve surgical procedures and outcomes. The Boston-based company said it will be available initially in the U.S. and next year worldwide.
Activ Surgical said it will initially focus on promoting the new software for the most common laparoscopic procedures, including cholecystectomy, colectomy, hysterectomy and gastrectomy, where blood flow and critical structure identification are crucial to optimal outcomes.
The company’s product portfolio is built on the ActiveEdge platform and includes hardware-agnostic imaging software and computer-driven guidance systems, both for scopes and robots, to improve situational awareness and real-time imaging during surgical procedures and enable safe tissue access.
“The future of surgery is collaborative, with human judgment and wisdom augmented by robotics precision,” said Activ Surgical CEO Todd Usen in a news release. “With nearly 400,000 deaths in the U.S. every year due to avoidable medical errors, our surgical intelligence platform is designed to dramatically improve outcomes, safety and accessibility by arming surgeons with real-time information to make better informed decisions.”
The most commonly employed surgical imaging process, ICG, uses fluorescent dye invented more than 70 years ago and does not offer real-time, objective physiologic information to surgeons when they need it during procedures, according to Dr. Peter Kim, the company’s co-founder and chief science officer.
“The next frontier in surgery is advanced imaging, led by innovation from companies like Activ Surgical, to enable intraoperative imaging and image overlays, guided by machine learning,” added Dr. Vipul Patel, medical director of both the Global Robotics Institute at Advent Health Celebration and of the Advent Health Cancer Institute urologic oncology program (Orlando, Fla.) . “The potential for Activ Surgical to use AI and machine learning to inform robotics-assisted surgery, bringing together the best of human judgment and wisdom augmented by robotics precision, is a game-changer in helping the surgical community achieve better outcomes.”