Johnson & Johnson MedTech (NYSE: JNJ) today announced new progress with its Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery.
In June, the medtech giant announced the launch of the Polyphonic AI fund for Surgery, aimed at helping to develop AI solutions that solve challenges before, during and after surgery. A coalition of companies joined this effort, including Nvidia and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The initiative builds on Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s work to advance AI to redefine modern surgical practices and improve patient outcomes.
The Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery aims to ensure the acceleration and responsible governance of data. Its focus centers around proposals that support AI model development, data engineering and management and AI governance.
J&J MedTech — one of the largest medical device companies in the world — said its initial focus with the fund was the QuickFire Challenge program, which sought submissions from applicants and grant funding for selected awardees from academic and non-academic institutions, researchers, developers, startups, and established companies. Applicants had the opportunity to receive grant funding up to $100,000 and mentorship from experts across Johnson & Johnson.
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According to J&J MedTech, it received submissions from academics, researchers, startups, developers and large companies across 29 countries. Projects focused on perioperative decision-making, surgical efficiency and data management and governance. Several utilized multimodal AI, integrating video, imaging, audio and clinical data.
Today, the company said its QuickFire Challenge awarded Mayo Clinic and QAS.AI. Both now receive award funding and expert mentorship and eligibility for computing tools and technologies to advance innovations.
Mayo Clinic focuses on developing a computer vision model to detect surgical site infections and a range of post-operative wound complications across surgical specialties. QAS.AI builds real-time decision support tools that analyze intra-operative vascular imaging data to help clinicians make faster, more informed decisions during and after vascular procedures.
Johnson & Johnson MedTech said the second round of the challenge opens this month. It plans to invite all first-round applicants to join a growing network of innovators focused on advancing surgical AI. The company said this could expand access to follow-on programming, mentorship and networking opportunities.
“The Polyphonic AI Fund is about a global community rallying around the potential of AI to transform surgery,” said Shan Jegatheeswaran, SVP, Global Head of Digital, MedTech, Johnson & Johnson. “The passionate response we received in the first QuickFire Challenge reflects the growing excitement around surgical AI. We can now build on this response through the Polyphonic AI Fund to support an open developer community and create more opportunity to advance promising projects.”
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