Medtronic to launch AI compute platform for the operating room

Medtronic has previewed Touch Surgery Aide, an AI-powered compute platform intended for operating rooms and positioned as the foundation for its Touch Surgery ecosystem. The company plans to present the platform at the Society of Robotic Surgery 2026 Annual Meeting in Hollywood, Florida.

Touch Surgery is designed to link stages of surgical care, including pre-operative planning and training, intra-operative tele-mentoring and tele-proctoring, and AI-powered post-operative insights. Medtronic said the ecosystem is meant to simplify workflows and extend access beyond individual operating rooms. Touch Surgery Aide adds multimodal AI support during procedures, giving surgeons actionable information, supporting case review, and helping teams improve clinical decision-making over time.

The platform uses NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure, including Holoscan, CUDA, and TensorRT. It combines computer vision, multimodal AI, and accelerated inference to process surgical video and procedural context in real time. According to Medtronic, this architecture can run multiple AI applications simultaneously during a live operation and is designed to learn and evolve.

Its first real-time application is Instrument Exit Point, or IEP, which has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance for use with Medtronic's Hugo robotic-assisted surgery system. Using computer vision, IEP displays a visual notification when selected instruments move beyond the visible field of view during a robotic procedure. Medtronic described this as an early move toward AI-enabled support in robotic surgery.

Medtronic intends to broaden the platform over time to support laparoscopic surgery, additional real-time applications, connections with other company technologies in the operating room, and insights derived from case data. Hugo received FDA clearance for urologic procedures in December 2025, and Medtronic submitted 510(k) applications in June 2026 for general and gynecologic uses in the U.S. The company said Hugo has been used in tens of thousands of procedures in more than 35 countries across six continents.