Johnson & Johnson is collaborating with Nvidia to create AI-powered surgical applications.
J&J’s MedTech subsidiary and Nvidia intend to incorporate AI into devices and platforms from pre-op to post-op to ensure that surgeons have access to all relevant information, according to Nvidia’s vice president of health care, Kimberly Powell. For example, the companies are utilizing AI to evaluate surgical videos and automate the time-consuming post-procedure documentation.
“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 said CNBC during an interview.
J&J’s MedTech division develops tools and solutions for ailments such as heart failure, kidney disease, and stroke, and its technology is utilized in over 75 million surgeries each year, the company told CNBC. Powell stated that Nvidia has been working with medical devices and imaging for over a decade.
Shan Jegatheeswaran, vice president and worldwide head of digital at J&J MedTech, stated that one minute of surgical footage is comparable to around 25 CT scans, therefore having the computational power and infrastructure to annotate and share those movies broadly will be beneficial to surgeons.
In the medium term, he believes that de-identifying and improving the video can assist teach and train doctors. In the long run, analytics can be used on top of video to provide real-time decision support. Residents will no longer have to rely entirely on the insights and availability of their institutions’ more experienced physicians.
“Think of athletes. In an interview with CNBC, Jegatheeswaran explained that they look at game film and improve with time as they look at themselves. “That’s sort of the starting point. That is the holy grail in the short run.”
Powell stated that the partnership is in its “early innings,” and that many applications will require time to fine-tune and deploy securely. However, she stated that nondiagnostic use cases, such as automating paperwork, will save surgeons time and make a difference “right out of the gate.”
“I think all of us as patients should get really 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 said in a statement. “They’re going to have the very best tools and information at their disposal.”
