SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Oct. 27, 2025 – Johnson & Johnson MedTech, a global leader in surgical technologies and solutions, today announced progress of the Polyphonic™ AI Fund for Surgery to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that improve surgical care. The Polyphonic™ AI Fund for Surgery QuickFire Challenge awarded Mayo Clinic and QAS.AI, who will receive award funding and expert mentorship and eligibility for computing tools and technologies to help advance their innovations.
The Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery was announced in June 2025 to support AI-driven innovation and is supported by Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s Polyphonic Digital Ecosystem. Joined by a coalition of companies including NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the initiative builds on the company’s work to advance open innovation and provide AI solutions a secure path into ORs globally.
“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.”
One of the initial initiatives of the Fund is to leverage the QuickFire Challenge program with an open call for surgical AI innovation. The effort drew 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. Many explored the use of multimodal AI – integrating video, imaging, audio, and clinical data – to enhance surgical precision and decision-making. Others emphasized reducing variability in outcomes, improving interoperability and scalability, and ensuring regulatory readiness.
Selected as first round awardees of the Polyphonic™ AI Fund for Surgery QuickFire Challenge, Mayo Clinic is focused on developing a computer vision model to detect surgical site infections and a broad range of post-operative wound complications across surgical specialties. Also selected as first round awardees, QAS.AI is building 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.
With the second round of the Polyphonic AI Fund QuickFire Challenge opening in October, Johnson & Johnson MedTech will continue to support the broader developer community. In addition, all first-round applicants will be invited to join a growing network of innovators focused on advancing surgical AI. This community will gain access to follow-on programming, mentorship, and networking opportunities, reinforcing the Fund’s mission to bring AI-driven solutions into operating rooms around the world.
The Polyphonic ecosystem is available in early access to select hospitals only. To request further information and stay informed, visit https://thenext.jnjmedtech.com/digital.
About Surgical Solutions from Johnson & Johnson MedTech
Across Johnson & Johnson, we are tackling the world’s most complex and pervasive health challenges. For over 100 years, we have helped advance surgical care through our innovative portfolio across wound closure, adjunctive hemostats, surgical stapling and instruments, robotics and digital solutions. Together, with clinicians and healthcare experts around the world we are progressing what’s next in surgery to better solve patient needs in metabolic and cardiovascular disease, cancer, and aesthetics and reconstruction. For more, visit
https://thenext.jnjmedtech.com.
About Johnson & Johnson
At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more about our MedTech sector’s global scale and deep expertise in cardiovascular, orthopaedics, surgery and vision solutions at https://thenext.jnjmedtech.com. Follow us at @JNJMedTech and on LinkedIn.