Johnson & Johnson MedTech has announced it is working to accelerate and scale Artificial Intelligence (AI) for surgery with NVIDIA, supporting increased access to real-time analysis and global availability of AI algorithms for surgical decision-making, education and collaboration across the connected operating room (OR).
The companies executed a memorandum of understanding to accelerate AI for Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s extensive surgical technologies portfolio with NVIDIA’s AI platform for healthcare. The technologies are designed to allow for fast, secure, and real-time AI deployment through Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s digital surgery ecosystem.
“Johnson & Johnson MedTech is advancing healthcare toward a future that’s more connected and personalised,” said Tim Schmid, Executive Vice President, and Worldwide Chairman, MedTech. “This future will be increasingly enabled by digital technologies that deliver efficiency, inform decision-making and extend surgical training and education. Our deep heritage in healthcare and digital ecosystem in surgery and NVIDIA’s AI platforms hold enormous potential to create a more connected surgical experience.”
A key element of accelerating AI for surgery is advanced edge computing to allow for localised data processing within the OR, a necessary step for AI algorithms to analyse live and stored surgical data in real time. The approach can also help reduce the need for the transfer of sensitive data and allow for specific applications to run separately within the secure computing environment, delivering ultra-low latency within the operating room, where every second matters.
The NVIDIA IGX edge computing platform and the NVIDIA Holoscan edge AI platform create infrastructure to deploy AI-powered software applications in the OR.
Johnson & Johnson MedTech will also leverage AI technologies to extend its open ecosystem for surgery. NVIDIA’s purpose-built solutions are designed to help accelerate innovation throughout the ecosystem and speed the development and deployment of AI-powered applications in a secure and scalable manner.
“One of the major challenges in scaling AI for surgery is the closed design of surgical technologies,” said Shan Jegatheeswaran, Vice President and Global Head of Digital, MedTech. “Bringing advanced edge computing hardware and software to the OR enables scalability of innovation and new AI-powered solutions for clinical decision-making, education and training, and collaboration – with the ultimate goal of advancing patient care.”