In an exclusive interview with The Silicon Review, Charismatic Todd Usen (of Activ Surgical) said: ‘Our most significant goal is to democratize surgery’

“Our ActivSight technology applies to over 70 million procedures worldwide.”

Todd Usen, CEO of Activ Surgical, is a seasoned leader with more than 30 years of experience in medical devices and healthcare. He has a proven track record of developing and commercializing novel products. Usen joined Activ Surgical, a Boston-based digital surgery company, in January 2019 and has led the company through its 510K clearance of ActivSight and has raised $92 million after serving as President of the Medical Systems Group at Olympus Corporation of the Americas.

Before joining Olympus, he was President of Orthopedics at Smith and Nephew. He held several other positions at Smith and Nephew, including Senior Vice President and General Manager, Joint Reconstruction; Senior Vice President, Sports Medicine; and Senior Vice President, Endoscopy.

Prior to Smith and Nephew, Usen worked for Boston Scientific as the Vice President of Sales for the Neurovascular Division, Director of Endoscopy Sales, and Global Manager of Field Development. He has a B.S. in Marketing from the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Business and did his M.B.A. work at Pepperdine University.

Activ Surgical is revolutionizing surgical vision, enabling a future of augmented reality-based and artificial intelligence-driven surgery that is safe, smart, and accessible to all.

Todd Usen recently spoke to The Silicon Review, and here’s what he had to say.

Interview Highlights

Q. What is your story?

My mother had multiple sclerosis and would go in and out of remission throughout my childhood. I was not fully aware of this disease as a youngster. Sometimes, she'd have a patch over her glasses because she lost vision in one eye, then it would come back and the patch would be gone. Some days she could barely walk, and then two days later she’d be playing tennis. Ultimately, she lost mobility and was bedridden for the last decade of her life.

Her condition both saddened and intrigued me, but I didn’t want to be a doctor. When I was approached with the opportunity to get into medical devices, it made sense to me. It was an opportunity to develop and distribute technologies that could change patients’ lives. And because of what happened with my mom, I have always been incredibly passionate about it. I care deeply about the patient, but equally important, about the family in the waiting room that is extremely worried about their loved one.

Activ Surgical excites me because we are visualizing key critical structures and blood flow that are not visible to the naked eye during surgery. Our ActivSight technology applies to over 70 million procedures worldwide. This is something far greater than the average device. We can provide actionable information through collective intelligence for every single surgeon around the world. That way, every patient can have confidence their surgeon has the proper information to get a great outcome.

Q. What is your overall philosophy for leading an organization?

There’s a lot I don't know, and I don’t think I am smart enough to know what I don't know. I believe in surrounding myself with superstars who will complement my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses. I want people who will tell me the things I need to know to make the company better and let them lead and make key decisions.

People are number one, two, three, and four on my list of priorities – by a lot. I want to make sure I am recruiting, hiring, and developing great talent and giving those people opportunities to excel and shine.

I will always challenge people. I will always ask for justifications for our decisions. They must be well thought-out and have mitigation plans if they fail. I try to empower people by inspiring them. To me, that means I have their back, and they know I have their back.

That doesn’t mean I am making life easier for them, but they know I have their best interests in mind. As a result, I can hold them more accountable. We can have difficult discussions because they know it’s not personal. They also know I am going to help them develop their career.

Q. As the CEO of Activ Surgical, what are your major roles and responsibilities?

My number one responsibility as CEO is to be the outward-facing person for Activ Surgical and make sure the world knows who we are. I can brag about the company because I know we have the right people and the right systems. I need to make sure we are delivering the technology we say we are going to deliver.

I am a big believer in controlling the controllables. I can't control the capital markets or whether we have inflation or supply chain issues. I can control how we deliver technology to the market and how we adjust to the economic situation. I can control utilizing my resources to find alternative methods.

Tell me about an accomplishment that shaped your career.

Early in my career at Boston Scientific, I was in a sales role. In my first year, I won rep of the year, which was a big deal, and the company truly celebrated my success. I gave a speech and was very appreciative. I was promoted to regional sales manager and in our first year our team won region of the year and many individuals were awarded top honors. I realized how much I loved watching my people grow and develop and achieve and how emotional I was when they were called up to receive their awards.

When I got up to accept the award for the team, it got emotional for me, and I had a hard time getting through my speech because I was overcome by the gratitude I felt for every individual on our team.

That moment shaped me for the rest of my career. Leadership is not for everyone. The best athletes don't always make the best coaches. But I wanted nothing more than to help lead people and teams and make sure we get the most out of people.

Q. Can you introduce us to your products or services? What are their key features?

Activ Surgical’s technology seeks to transform massive amounts of data, gathered intra-operatively, to give surgeons real-time guidance in the operating room. It boosts human judgment with artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help surgeons visualize blood flow, hidden structures, and other “invisible” features.

For example, the inability to assess a patient's blood flow during a procedure can generate complications. Surgeons have difficulty assessing blood flow in real-time, which can lead to mistakes. Arming surgeons with cutting-edge visualization technology could prevent many of these.

The platform will provide a framework to train artificial intelligence models that can deliver insights from some of the world’s top surgeons, in real-time, to all surgical systems and operating rooms around the world. While the most experienced surgeons cannot be in every procedure, their insights and data can be. This will help ensure that world-class surgical care is available for patients everywhere.

This is a big deal. Next to heart disease and cancer, preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. In addition, 26% of all medical errors occur during surgery, which increases mortality and side effects and costs more than $36 billion globally.

Since 2019, Activ Surgical has tripled in size and achieved major milestones, including FDA clearance for the ActivSight™ enhanced visualization module; completion of first-in-human trials at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; secured a $45 million Series B funding round; with an additional $15 million extension, and introduced the ActivInsights™ AR-based software suite. These successes yielded many awards in 2021, including the Best in Healthcare AI for the AI Tech Awards, as well as BostInno’s Inno on Fire Blazer award.

Q. Who do you believe are your biggest competitors? How do you, as an organization, differ from them?

We are in a unique space. Our product, ActivSight, attaches laparoscopes, but we are not a scope company. Our technology doesn’t perform laparoscopic procedures, it enhances them. So, our competition is less in industry and more in academia, on the bench side.

Many university labs are testing advanced visualization for the operating room. No doubt, eventually, some of this research will be translated into core IP for emerging startups.

Right now, our biggest challenge is not spreading ourselves too thin. This technology can be applied in many ways, and we have to make some hard choices. We need to focus on the best applications for our technology in the most appropriate disease states and not be distracted by all the things we “can” do.

Q. What do you hope to accomplish within the next five years?

Our most significant goal is to democratize surgery. Think of a Zoom meeting, with people attending from all over the world. Now, imagine that applied to surgery. Crucial information can be fed to surgical suites anywhere, giving surgeons real-time data to make the best possible decisions.

By visually mapping the surgical field, we can provide this information. It could be used in emerging nations or small rural hospitals in the U.S. or major teaching hospitals in large metropolitan areas.

Robotic surgery is an amazing technology, but the doctor still must steer it and be in the loop. But when a robot can see things that the surgeon cannot—that’s the real game changer. That's when the technology is complimenting the surgeon rather than simply augmenting them. And that should happen in the next five years.

“We can provide actionable information through collective intelligence for every single surgeon around the world. That way, every patient can have confidence their surgeon has the proper information to get a great outcome.”