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Johnson & Johnson MedTech has announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to advance and expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in surgery. This partnership aims to enhance real-time analysis and broaden the availability of AI algorithms for surgical decision-making, education, and collaboration within connected operating rooms (ORs) on a global scale.

Under a memorandum of understanding, the two companies are joining forces to expedite the integration of AI across Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s comprehensive surgical technologies portfolio, utilizing NVIDIA’s AI platform tailored for healthcare. These technologies are engineered to facilitate swift, secure, and real-time deployment of AI within Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s digital surgery ecosystem.

“Johnson & Johnson MedTech is advancing healthcare toward a future that’s more connected and personalized,” 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 pivotal aspect of this initiative involves leveraging advanced edge computing to enable localized data processing within the OR. This capability is crucial for AI algorithms to analyze live and stored surgical data instantly, thereby minimizing the reliance on transferring sensitive information. Additionally, this approach allows specific applications to operate independently within a secure computing environment, ensuring ultra-low latency within the operating room, where timing is critical.

To support these objectives, NVIDIA’s IGX edge computing platform and the Holoscan edge AI platform provide the necessary infrastructure for deploying AI-driven software applications within the OR.

Johnson & Johnson MedTech intends to utilize AI technologies to expand its open ecosystem for surgery, leveraging NVIDIA’s purpose-built solutions to foster innovation and accelerate 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.”

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