Meet the founder of GAUSS SURGICAL Sid Satish turned his idea for technology to improve the safety of women in childbirth into a multi-million dollar business. As a kid, Sid loved Lego, science fairs, and working on projects. His parents supported him by giving him early access to computers and software, and an uncle encouraged him too. “My uncle was a cool and super techy guy who helped me build an earthquake alarm.” So it was no surprise that Sid always wanted to study engineering and went on to study Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley. Although not a medical student, as part of his graduate work in the UC Berkeley Master of Translational Medicine program, he got to watch surgery for the first time. As part of his degree, he had to complete a team-based capstone project. Sid and a While the rest of us were watching funny cat videos on our mobile devices, Sid Satish was figuring out how to use their cameras and combine this with computer vision algorithms to save lives. Here’s his story and advice to you. couple of fellow students were paired with a doctor to generate ideas to solve real-world medical problems. Sid was fascinated by what he saw in the operating rooms, and his curious nature kicked in. Sid and his group began researching healthcare. He found out that in most of the world death from childbirth was going down, but in the USA it was rising due to complications due to hemorrhaging. “I started following two really great urologists around in operating rooms, asking a lot of questions.” This is when he realized how hard it was for medical professionals to accurately calculate blood loss in the operating room. “As I spoke to more doctors and nurses, it became clear this was an unmet medical need. The technology to combat this didn’t yet exist.” Sid believes viewing the situation with fresh eyes was an advantage. “I think I recognized the need in part because I wasn’t in medicine.” After he and other students pulled out their iPhones and started taking photos of the scrub tech’s instrument table, Sid asked himself “what if an app could remove the guesswork from surgical blood loss?” It was the right question. Sid’s fellow students and mentors completed prototyping and proof-of-concept work in 2011. They then decided that they had a great idea and believed in it enough to form a company: Gauss Surgical. However, the other two students went on to further studies, so Sid found himself in charge of starting up this new company. Three faculty members stayed on as mentors, and his father was also an important source of encouragement. “Dad mentored me greatly on the tech side.” Triton in use in the operating room
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