McSleepy is a knock out

Researchers at McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) have performed the world’s first totally automated administration of an anaesthetic using a system they created called ‘McSleepy’.

The new system administers drugs for general anaesthesia and monitors their separate effects completely automatically with no manual intervention.

‘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 five 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).

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

The anaesthetic technique was used on a patient who underwent a partial nephrectomy, a procedure that removes a kidney tumour while leaving the non-cancerous part of the kidney intact, over a period of three hours and 30 minutes.