Tech Shout!

Researchers from McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) have developed a brilliant automated machine named McSleepy that administers Anaesthesia without any sort of manual intervention.

The Device smartly administers drugs for general anesthesia and also does a second job of monitoring the separate effects in a fully automated way. The system first measures three separate parameters through an Integrated monitor of anaesthesia (IMA) which analyses depth of hypnosis via EEG analysis, judges pain with a new pain score, called Analgoscore, and does muscle relaxation through a phonomyography, all developed by ITAG. The System then administers the appropriate drugs using conventional infusion pumps, which is managed by a laptop computer where ‘McSleepy’ is installed.

“We have been working on closed-loop systems, where drugs are administered, their effects continuously monitored, and the doses are adjusted accordingly, for the last 5 years,” said Dr. Thomas M. Hemmerling of McGill’s Department of Anaesthesia and the Montreal General Hospital, who heads ITAG (Intelligent Technology in Anaesthesia research group), a team of anaesthesiologists, biomedical scientists and engineers.

“Think of ‘McSleepy’ as a sort of humanoid anaesthesiologist that thinks like an anaesthesiologist, analyses biological information and constantly adapts its own behaviour, even recognizing monitoring malfunction,” he added.

The device claims to be much more accurate and precise and it can even be much more efficient than a human. To add in mobility to the device, the McSleepy communicates with personal digital assistants (PDAs) which allow distant monitoring and anesthetic control. The system has already been tested; however the researchers say that it will take approximately five years to get the system under the commercial spotlight.