Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

We are all dependant on computers to perform complex and high risk tasks that make us safer, such as flying on commercialairplanes. Computers that automatically control such tasks are safer than humans as they are much better at performingrepetitive tasks with accuracy and precision. They do not necessarily act alone but can augment what we do (such asantilockingbrakes in our cars). Despite the potential to improve safety in healthcare; computer controlled automation has notbeen widely adopted.Errors causing significant harm are still a major problem in healthcare. For patients undergoing surgery, calculation of thecorrect drug dose is the most common error. These errors mostly occur due to human limitations e.g. fatigue, short attentionspan and patience while doing quick and accurate calculations repeatedly. Computer controlled drug delivery is the processof giving drugs to patients, where the computer calculates the dose and delivery timetable. This is especially important in theoperating room, as the anesthetist has to safely keep a patient unconscious while also performing a range of other tasks.Our goal is to develop iControl, an automatic control system for administering two key types of anesthesia drugs duringsurgery: one to keep the patient unconscious and another to suppress pain. As each patient responds differently to thesedrugs, the key to automated drug delivery is the ability to measure its effect; a problem our team has been working on for 10years. A device for measuring unconsciousness is commercialized and now we have invented a new way to measure painsuppression. Our goal is to combine these in a single device to optimize the delivery of anesthesia. iControl will use constantfeedback of drug effects to make frequent adjustments to the drug delivery rates. iControl will not replace theanesthesiologist, but instead act as an autopilot, thereby enhancing his abilities and improving the safety and quality of care.