Johnson & Johnson has revealed a partnership with Nvidia aimed at advancing new artificial intelligence (AI) applications for surgical procedures, with plans to integrate AI across various stages from pre-operation to post-operation.
Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, emphasized the collaboration’s goal to provide surgeons with comprehensive information access.
“There’s an ability to use all the sources of data inside an operating room, whether it’s your voice, or whether it’s the video coming from a camera inside the body, or elsewhere, to take advantage of the generative AI moment that we’re in,” Powell stated in an interview with CNBC.
J&J’s MedTech unit focuses on developing tools and solutions for medical conditions such as heart failure, kidney disease, and stroke, with its technology utilized in over 75 million procedures annually. Nvidia brings over a decade of experience in medical devices and imaging to the collaboration.
Shan Jegatheeswaran, vice president and global head of digital at J&J MedTech, highlighted the significance of surgical video data, equating one minute of such footage to approximately 25 CT scans.
He stressed the importance of robust computational power and infrastructure for annotating and sharing surgical videos, noting its potential to enhance surgical education and training, as well as provide real-time decision support through analytics.
“Think about athletes. They watch their game recordings and improve by learning from their performance over time. That’s sort of the starting point. That’s the holy grail in the short term,” Jegatheeswaran explained in the CNBC interview.
Powell acknowledged that while the collaboration is in its early stages, numerous applications will require refinement and safe implementation over time. However, she highlighted immediate benefits, such as automating paperwork to save surgeons time.
“I think all of us as patients should get excited about the fact that this kind of technology is going to be able to enter in and be within reach of all the clinicians and all the hardworking nurses and all the health-care staff,” Powell expressed. “They’re going to have the very best tools and information at their disposal.”
