Johnson & Johnson Launches the Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery to Advance Data-Driven Healthcare

Open call for innovation to help accelerate promising artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that target pressing challenges in surgery.

NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will join committee to evaluate and select awardees.

Effort builds on work within J&J MedTech’s Polyphonic™ Digital Ecosystem to provide AI innovation a path into ORs globally.

June 25, 2025 – Johnson & Johnson MedTech, a global leader in surgical technologies and solutions, today launched the Polyphonic^TM AI Fund for Surgery to help develop AI solutions that solve challenges before, during, and after surgery. Joined by a coalition of companies including NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the initiative builds on the company’s work to advance AI that will help redefine modern surgical practices and improve patient outcomes.

The Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery aims to ensure that innovation is both accelerated and responsibly governed and will focus on proposals that support AI model development, data engineering and management, and AI governance. One of the initial initiatives of the Fund will be to leverage the QuickFire Challenge program, which will seek submissions from applicants and grant funding for selected awardees from academic and non-academic institutions, researchers, developers, startups, and established companies.

Building on Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s nearly 140 years in surgery, NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure, and AWS’s cloud leadership, this effort brings together expertise from across the coalition. Innovators will benefit from best-in-class resources and mentorship, complete with developer workshops and programs on Johnson & Johnson MedTech, NVIDIA, and AWS technologies.

“Open innovation and open minds breed the best solutions in service of patients,” said Hani Abouhalka, Company Group Chairman, Surgery, Johnson & Johnson MedTech. “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. 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.”

Advancing AI for Surgery

The pressing need for healthcare innovation through digital transformation and AI solutions has never been clearer. Nearly 95% of healthcare professionals surveyed by Johnson & Johnson MedTech this year advocate for greater AI integration into daily healthcare practices.

The Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery builds on the work launched last year between Johnson & Johnson MedTech and NVIDIA to accelerate secure, real-time analysis of surgical data through the Polyphonic Digital Ecosystem. The companies are now furthering AI-based solutions for surgery addressing key challenges with data privacy, surgical learning and proficiency building, automation of surgical data enrichment, and enabling efficiency in R&D processes.

Johnson & Johnson MedTech is also leveraging the collaboration to accelerate how AI innovation can reach global operating rooms (ORs) by creating high-quality data sets enriched with AI-based annotations, enabling collaborative AI model development, and establishing a governance framework for surgical video data science. NVIDIA’s purpose-built solutions, including the NVIDIA IGX edge computing platform and the NVIDIA Holoscan platform are designed to help accelerate outcomes throughout the ecosystem and speed the development and deployment of AI-accelerated applications in a secure and scalable manner.

“We are just scratching the surface of what’s possible when surgeons and technologists come together to solve problems,” said Dr. Amin Madani*, an endocrine and acute care surgeon. “Surgeons and researchers want their work in AI to make an impact, but we are challenged to find a path from bench to bedside. I am excited about the potential to merge expertise across academia and private sector to build the necessary infrastructure and scale AI around the world and for the patients who need it most.”