Johnson & Johnson has teamed up with big tech developers, including Nvidia and Amazon Web Services, to help make artificial intelligence an integral tool within the operating room—with plans to support software developers focused on improving care before, after and during surgery.
The company’s medtech wing has launched the Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery, and will be taking proposals from academic and non-academic institutions as well as startups and established companies. Representatives from Nvidia and AWS will sit on a committee to help evaluate the submissions and select recipients of up to $100,000 in grant funding.
The program also aims to offer mentorship and development workshops to awardees, and provide the winners with access to tech stacks including computing hardware, modeling toolkits and datasets. The company said that any intellectual property will remain with its inventors.
“Open innovation and open minds breed the best solutions in service of patients,” Hani Abouhalka, J&J MedTech’s group chairman for surgery, said in a statement.
“Surgeons and their teams are asking for AI to make an impact. As global leaders in surgery, we are in a position to convene solutions that can improve surgery and offer the expertise and infrastructure to bring these solutions to light through our digital ecosystem,” Abouhalka said. “I am excited to hear from individuals and teams on a mission to use AI for good and to make the surgery experience better for everyone involved.”
The effort will build upon multiple J&J initiatives, including its namesake, the Polyphonic “social network” for surgeons that the company launched last year.
The platform allows providers to follow patients as they work through pre-op tasks, as well as observe remotely as they undergo the procedure and track their recovery through discharge. In addition, surgeons can create video clips, and tag and share them within their health system for review and training.
At the same time, J&J has been working with Nvidia to develop AI technologies that run in real-time within the OR, through the latter’s IGX and Holoscan edge-computing platforms.
The AI fund will also lean on the international QuickFire Challenge program, run through its J&J Innovation arm and JLABS locations, which in the past have focused on developers of neuroscience, oncology and respiratory therapies.
J&J said that applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and awardees will be announced quarterly through the end of 2026. The first cohort’s submission deadline is set for August 22.