A deal has been signed by Google to collaborate with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon so as to work on surgical robotics applications. According to the statement by J&J, both the companies will bring capabilities, intellectual property and expertise together in order to build a robotic-assisted surgical platform.

Johnson & Johnson said in a statement, "The companies will bring together capabilities, intellectual property and expertise to create an innovative robotic-assisted surgical platform capable of integrating advanced technologies with the goal of improving health care delivery in the operating room".

The partnership, put through review by antitrust authorities, is scheduled to be closed in the second quarter. Johnson & Johnson told The Wall Street Journal that the early stages of the partnership will focus on developing a robot-assisted surgery platform for colorectal, thoracic and gynecological procedures.

Andrew Conrad, head of Google X Life Sciences, said in a statement that they are looking forward to improve the experience of both surgeons and patients in the operating room. And combination of Google's expertise in computer science and imaging technology and Ethicon's expertise in surgical instrumentation and medicine could help achieve this.

Google's image analysis and machine vision software will be controlled by Ethicon for enhancing observance of surgeons while performing minimally invasive operations, which involve robotics. In recent years, Google is increasingly focusing on robotics, picking up over half a dozen robotics companies since 2013. Boston Dynamics is also the one among those companies, which is a maker of a sprinting four-legged cyborg called Cheetah.

In the meantime, the company has also increased its efforts to enter the healthcare industry. And according to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in the beginning, they were avoiding entry into this industry.