Nearly every business sector is working to develop “responsible” artificial intelligence for their respective functionalities, and among the heaviest burden of obligation lies in AI for healthcare. Those of us who develop advanced technology for healthcare devices are directly impacting human lives and need to have the highest standards for our solutions.
Strategic partnerships have long served as powerful tools to help innovators master new technologies, and they have proven especially valuable in helping healthcare companies meet those elevated standards for new tech – most notably, recent integrations for AI. Microsoft, for example, has raced to the forefront of AI advancement standing alongside OpenAI, its AI development partner. Together, the two companies have
plans to scale supercomputing capability and empower consumers to build their own solutions with access to OpenAI’s models. In healthcare, bringing AI solutions to the market requires a deep understanding of its capabilities and an execution plan with zero margin for error. To ensure reliable results, a strong emphasis must be placed on productization and the implementation of rigorous testing processes. These steps are essential to deliver a product that meets the highest standards of reliability.
Successfully advancing a technology as complex as AI takes a combination of a tech expert, such as Microsoft, NVIDIA or Google, and a domain expert with a mastery of their field. I helped establish exactly such a partnership last year when my company,
Asensus Surgical,
partnered with NVIDIA. Our experience in the domain of robotic-assisted, minimally invasive surgery and digitized surgery applications helped optimize the underlying tech from NVIDIA to address domain-specific challenges that are only found in our domain. Those challenges involve making surgeries safer by reducing complications.
It's a dynamic and fast-paced environment fueled by advances in deep learning and large language model/visual language model infrastructure. Here are some examples of the recently announced strategic collaborations:
NVIDIA – The engine builder for AI, NVIDIA recently struck deals with
Johnson & Johnson and
GE Healthcare, among others, as marquee brands leverage its proprietary infrastructure to build various AI platforms. In our own collaboration with
the world’s most valuable company, we are leveraging NVIDIA’s infrastructure and software solutions with our Intelligent Surgical Unit (ISU) edge device platform used during surgeries. Combining those capabilities with our domain experts and surgery-specific software applications has pushed us to the head of the pack in real-time intelligence for surgery. Our system can perceive (computer vision), learn (machine learning) and assist (clinical intelligence) during surgery, powering what we refer to as Performance-Guided Surgery.
Microsoft – It has shown a deep commitment to operational AI within health systems aimed at addressing physician and staff burnout, the patient experience and improving clinical efficiency. A very short list of Microsoft’s projects includes: recent partnerships to streamline administrative burden within major health systems, including at
Stanford Medicine,
Providence and
WellSpan Health, which are all employing Microsoft’s AI solution for clinical documentation. In addition to OpenAI, Microsoft has
another strategic partnership with the electronic health records giant Epic, which has been instrumental in increasing Microsoft’s presence in major hospitals.
Google Health – The company continues to expand its implementation of AI in the diagnostic space. A brief list of the search engine giant’s activities includes building diagnostic tools for
detecting Covid in a cough or identifying diabetic retinopathy
in an eye exam. Google has a key
data partnership with the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which leverages Google’s DeepMind AI and de-identified patient data from the VA to
accurately predict acute kidney injury up to 48 hours earlier than current diagnostic standards.
Amazon – At this year’s HIMSS Conference, the health tech company Royal Philips
announced it will use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to scale its solutions for digital pathology. With AWS in the “AI expert” role and Philips’ expertise in digital pathology, the partnership aims to help pathology labs better store, manage and analyze their data with an AI-enabled platform. AWS has been busy on the partnership front across health tech,
collaborating with Redox, Cloudwick and ClearDATA on initiatives that include AI, security, analytics and business intelligence.
Notable mention –
Dell Technologies is helping to develop and launch generative multimodal large language models into the workflows of Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, an initiative to help interpret chest x-rays. Also, GE Healthcare and Mass General Brigham
have teamed up to integrate AI into MGB’s radiology workflow.
Developing and implementing AI in healthcare has an array of complexities that make it uniquely challenging, including the fact that it is a highly regulated space with human lives on the line. To rise to the challenge and capitalize on the vast potential of AI, we will continue to see the strategic partnerships that have paired AI builders with industry experts in various sectors of healthcare.
In the race to build AI-powered solutions, finding the right strategic partner can streamline development and implementation and help bring new solutions to the market quickly.
Motti Frimer is the Vice President of R&D, Digital Solutions and Managing Director of Asensus Surgical, a medical device company that is digitizing the interface between the surgeon and patient to pioneer a new era of Performance-Guided Surgery.