To the land of Nod, automatically

Nicknamed "McSleepy" a new system developed by McGill researchers administers drugs for general anesthesia 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 5 years," said Dr. Thomas M. Hemmerling of McGill's Department of Anesthesia and the Montreal General Hospital, who heads ITAG (Intelligent Technology in Anesthesia research group), a team of anesthesiologists, biomedical scientists and engineers. "Think of "McSleepy" as a sort of humanoid anesthesiologist that thinks like an anesthesiologist, analyses biological information and constantly adapts its own behavior, even recognizing monitoring malfunction.