Nvidia and Johnson & Johnson to create AI applications for surgery

Johnson and Johnson on Monday announced that he was working with Nvidia to develop and scale new AI applications for surgery.

J&J’s MedTech division and Nvidia plan to integrate AI into devices and platforms from pre-surgery to post-surgery to ensure surgeons have access to all the information they need, said Nvidia vice president of healthcare Kimberly Powell. For example, companies are using AI to analyze surgical video and automate the time-consuming documentation required after a procedure.

“There’s an opportunity to use all sources of data in one operating room, whether it’s your voice or the video coming from a body camera or elsewhere, to take advantage of the generative AI moment that we’re in,” Powell said. in an interview with CNBC.

The MedTech division at J&J creates tools and solutions for conditions such as heart failure, kidney disease and stroke, and its technology is used in more than 75 million procedures each year, the company told CNBC. Powell said Nvidia has been working in medical devices and imaging for more than a decade.

Shan Jegatheeswaran, vice president and global head of digital at J&J MedTech, said just one minute of surgical video is equivalent to approximately 25 CT scans, so having the computing power and infrastructure to annotate and widely share those videos will be powerful for the surgeons.

In the short term, he said de-identification and video enhancement could help educate and train surgeons. In the long term, analytics can be layered over video to provide real-time decision support. More accessible surgical video means that residents will not have to rely solely on the insight and availability of the more experienced physicians at their institutions.

“Think about the athletes. They watch the game tape and get better over time as they introspect,” Jegatheeswaran said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s kind of a starting point. It’s the holy grail in the short term.”

Powell said the collaboration is in its “early stages” and many apps will take time to fine-tune and safely deploy. However, she said non-diagnostic use cases, such as automating documentation, will help save surgeons time and make a difference “right out of the gate.”

“I think all of us as patients should be really excited about the fact that this kind of technology is going to be able to come in and be available to all the clinicians, all the hard-working nurses and all the healthcare staff,” Powell said. “They will have the best tools and information at their disposal.”