Dmitry Neymark
University of Saskatchewan
MD Class of 2023
As technology continues to evolve at an exponential rate, conversations about its innovative promise become increasingly prominent in every sphere of life. Medicine and the field of anesthesiology are no exceptions to this trend.
Discussions surrounding the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) elicit a mixture of feelings, ranging from excitement about its potential for enhancing patient care to uncertainty about the impact it may have on the future of the profession among current and prospective practitioners alike.
Amidst these feelings of ambivalence, one aspect of technological advancement is nearly universally agreed upon – emerging innovations will inevitably impact the practice of anesthesiology.
Historically, anesthesiologists have established a track record of being the “early adopters” of technology. Beginning with the development of positive pressure mechanical ventilation in the 1951 during the polio epidemic in Copenhagen, the practice of anesthesia has been consistently shifting towards automation2. In addition to widespread emergence of ventilators, the 1950s were marked by the first attempts to automate anesthesia monitoring and administration1. The early anesthetic robots would measure the depth of anesthesia using data derived from the electroencephalograph (EEG) signal and respond with pre-programmed, rule-based feedback1. These devices were developed in a top-down manner, meaning they relied on pre-set algorithms to account for a multitude of clinical scenarios when executing their function3. This design limited the usefulness of human-programmed machines to the setting of simple and constrained systems, as they lacked the flexibility of a human anesthesiologist to manage the demands of complex clinical environments.
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