Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

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