Johnson & Johnson’s medical technology unit and Verily, a precision health AI company, have penned separate new deals with technology giant Nvidia.
J&J MedTech, the medical technology wing of the pharma and life sciences giant, will tap Nvidia Isaac for Healthcare—its healthcare robotics division—to create new digital twins, which are programs that simulate how new systems may perform in real-world situations. For J&J's purposes, the digital twins will generate simulations of procedures in operating rooms or inside patients.
It will also use data generation to “help complete the picture with highly accurate, physics-based data,” according to a joint statement.
This will be used for J&J’s MONARCH Platform for Urology, where a virtual operating room can help clinical teams set up a robotic system before starting a procedure.
The system is set to be commercially available in the U.S. next year with a focus on kidney stone removals.
“Simulation is the next frontier in surgical robotics,” Neda Cvijetic, senior vice president and global head of robotics and digital R&D at J&J MedTech, said in a release.
“With AI-driven simulation, we can create high-fidelity digital twins that adhere to the laws of physics, such that the simulation accurately anticipates the real world and ultimately unlocks physical AI capabilities," Cvijetic added. "As we launch new robotics technologies and continue accelerating our innovation pipeline, these simulations have the potential to enhance our differentiated technology development in support of our mission to deliver better patient outcomes.”
As for Verily, the company is tapping a range of Nvidia’s AI offerings and integrating them into its Pre platform, which is used by various entities across the healthcare and life sciences fields to boost AI use.
This will also help “accelerate analyses within the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Researcher Workbench, which will be powered by Pre through Verily’s partnership with Vanderbilt University Medical Center,” Verily said in a statement.
The All of Us Researcher Workbench hosts one of the world’s largest genomics data sets and supports nearly 20,000 registered researchers globally.
Financials terms of both deals were not disclosed.
Nvidia, with an eye-watering $4.9 trillion market cap, is making deeper inroads into the life sciences industry. These two deals were part of a broader spectrum of pacts that also included a deal with Big Pharma Eli Lilly, which sees the pair team up to build a new supercomputer—one that will be the most powerful owned and operated by a pharma company, according to Lilly.
Back in the summer, Johnson & Johnson also signed up with 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.