Dive Brief:

• Johnson & Johnson awarded the first grants from a fund launched earlier this year to support the use of artificial intelligence in surgery.
• Mayo Clinic and QAS.AI were the first awardees, J&J announced on Monday. J&J is opening a second round of the Polyphonic AI Fund QuickFire Challenge in October.
• J&J started the fund in collaboration with NVIDIA and Amazon after launching its Polyphonic digital ecosystem for surgery last year, which offers software applications around surgical video and planning. The ecosystem is available in early access in select hospitals.

Dive Insight:

J&J started the challenge with a call for surgical AI innovation. The two awardees will receive an unspecified amount of funding, expert mentorship and eligibility for computing tools to help advance their innovations.

Mayo Clinic is developing a computer vision model to detect surgical site infections and a range of post-operative wound complications across different surgical specialties. QAS.AI, a startup founded at the University of Buffalo, is building real-time decision support tools that analyze vascular imaging data to help surgeons make decisions during and after vascular procedures. 

The first round of submissions drew responses from more than 29 countries, with applications from academics, startups and large companies. Many of the applications explored multimodal AI, which integrates video, imaging, audio and clinical data, to help with surgical decisions. Others sought to reduce variability in outcomes or improve interoperability. 

“The passionate response we received in the first QuickFire Challenge reflects the growing excitement around surgical AI,” Shan Jegatheeswaran, J&J MedTech’s global head of digital, said in a statement. “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.”