Triton Fluid Management System

Trition (formerly Pixel 3) is part of Gauss Surgical's suite of apps for the operating room. Using an image processing algorithm to calculate the amount of blood lost on sponges, TritonS is the world’s first and only app for real-time estimation of surgical blood loss.

Estimation of blood loss (EBL) during surgery has been an enigma for decades, and studies have shown the current practice of “eyeballing” to be wildly inaccurate. This has fueled an epidemic of overtransfusion in surgical patients, with 20-60% of transfusions reported as unnecessary. A recent study of 48,000 patients at Johns Hopkins published in the journal Anesthesiology (Frank et. al., 2012) reported wide variability in blood use among clinicians during intraoperative procedures, indicating that “blood conservation is one of the few areas in medicine where outcomes can be improved, risk reduced, and costs saved, all at the same time.”

Gauss Surgical, Inc. has developed a mobile platform for accurate, real-time monitoring of surgical blood loss. Gauss’s flagship product, the Triton Fluid Management System (TM), has an intuitive iPad-based user interface, requires minimal training, and seamlessly integrates into existing surgical workflow. Images captured by the mobile application are processed using cloud-based computer vision and machine learning algorithms (Feature Extraction TechnologyTM) to rapidly estimate hemoglobin loss on surgical sponges within seconds.

Surgeons and anesthesiologists for the first time can monitor blood loss in real time with a high degree of accuracy. This enabling leap in perioperative fluid management has the potential to lead to billions of dollars in savings to hospitals through optimization of blood product usage, reduced length of stay, and improved safety and quality of patient care. Gauss’s algorithmic platform resides on a robust, HIPAA-compliant cloud server that enables highly scalable data transfer, analysis, and storage. Simultaneously, actionable systems-level insights into intraoperative blood management are provided to payers, providers, and clinicians via an analytics/SaaS portal.

Clinical studies have confirmed that the system can monitor hemoglobin loss with high accuracy, with two peer-reviewed publications in Anesthesia & Analgesia. In May of 2014, the Triton Fluid Management System (TM) received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), becoming the world’s first and only mobile platform for real-time estimation of surgical blood loss.