To develop its next generation surgical robots, startup Precision Robotics has deployed an NVIDIA DGX A100 system in Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre (HK4) in Hong Kong,
The DGX A100 system – the universal system for all AI workloads – is built for data analytics, scientific computing and AI development, in HK4 to reduce model training time and speed up the machine learning development process.
As a member of NVIDIA Inception, NVIDIA’s acceleration platform for AI startups, Precision Robotics has access to NVIDIA experts, engineers and go-to-market support.
“Our team sees a huge potential in the medical robotics industry, and we are committed to establishing ourselves as a significant player in this rapidly burgeoning field,” said Dr. B P L Lo, chief technology advisor, at Precision Robotics (HK).
Precision Robotics is a spin-out company from Imperial College London with a core research and development base at Hong Kong Science Park. It aims to develop precise, agile and intelligent surgical robots that are dexterous, compact and versatile by combining a range of patented technologies to deliver advantages to surgeons and patients.
“We needed an experienced and reliable partner to help us with digital infrastructure development, allowing us to focus on high-level robotics R&D. Equinix is no doubt our partner-of-choice in this space. Thanks to Equinix, we have been able to process ultra-heavy data workloads and leverage machine learning on our upcoming surgical robot R&D projects,” Lo added.
Healthcare innovations need advance computing platforms
The rapid digitisation of the healthcare industry has resulted in the rising demand for modern robotic surgery.
According to Data Bridge Market Research, the medical robotic systems market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% within the forecast period of 2021 to 2028, reaching USD 34.91 billion by 2028.
To support its vision of developing the next generation surgical robots, Precision Robotics needed a high-power digital infrastructure to run a DGX A100 system for machine learning and AI development.
Equinix is one of the first three operators to join the NVIDIA DGX Ready Data Center Partner Program in Asia-Pacific, EMEA and North America. DynaSys Solutions Limited helped Precision Robotics build a foundational and future-ready digital infrastructure on Platform Equinix for secure data storage, processing, analysis and machine learning.
“Advances in healthcare require accelerated computing platforms and software designed to meet the needs of modern medical research. Deployed in the Equinix IBX data centre, NVIDIA DGX A100 delivers easy access to the world’s leading compute performance to aid the discovery of new AI-powered healthcare treatments like the next-generation surgical robots being developed by Precision Robotics,” said Raymond Teh, vice president, Worldwide Field Operations, Asia Pacific at NVIDIA.
Larry Tam, managing director, Equinix Hong Kong, added: “The wave of digitalisation has swept across various sectors, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Healthcare players are set to embrace smarter infrastructure, as agility, flexibility and innovation are no longer nice-to-haves, but prerequisites of success.”
As a next step, Equinix said Precision Robotics can leverage the rich ecosystem on Platform Equinix in Hong Kong to potentially open up and lease part of its NVIDIA DGX A100 free time to other AI and R&D organisations, further promoting the use of AI-backed applications and fostering wider AI development in Hong Kong.
Furthermore, the healthcare startup can also leverage Equinix Fabric, a software-defined interconnection service, to set up direct, on demand connection between its infrastructures and cloud service providers. This will allow Precision Robotics to create a more cost effective and secure network path for enhancing collaboration with its global medical counterparts efficiently.
“Equinix been leading the way in making the cloud an easier and safer place to enhance solutions, offering reliability, safety, control and low latency with an interconnection-first strategy. We will continue to support our customers to capture opportunities and expand capabilities to effectively respond to dynamic trends,” Tam said.
