Rise of the Machines

By SHIRIE LENG, MD “We are convinced the machine can do better than human anesthesiologists.” This statement was made by a doctor. Not only a doctor but an anesthesiologist. Not just an anesthesiologist but a pediatric anesthesiologist. Not just any old pediatric anesthesiologist but one in charge of pediatric anesthesia research at the University of British Columbia medical school in Vancouver. One can only assume that this guy has a pretty low estimation of what his colleagues can do. Must make for great break room conversation. The doctor making this statement, one JM Ansermino, is co-creator of a new automated anesthesia system called, cutely, iControl-RP. This machine uses vital sign readings along with oxygen saturation levels and EEG monitoring to give anesthesia to patients undergoing surgery, without any human input. Thanks to my fellow blogger Karen Siebert for pointing this one out here and here. iControl-RP is what the creators call “A scheme-based closed-loop anesthesia system”. Here’s what their paper says about it: The system software in its entirety consists of approximately 22K lines of Scheme code and features a client-server implementation interfacing medical devices with portable graphical user interface. The strengths of the Scheme functional language have been leveraged to build a robust maintainable modular system with extensive testing facilities to mitigate the inherent safety hazards associated with the application. Blah, blah, blah...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: THCB Shirie Leng Source Type: blogs