Development of an application for remote syringe pump control in anesthesia infusion

Anesthesia induction is a high risk step in every surgical procedure. However, monitoring and control of anesthesia depth is not fully developed, due to the lack of constant correlation between vital signs and drug infusion. This work proposes a LabVIEW user-friendly application tool to control syringe pumps using serial communication protocol, to enable a better control of the drug infusion process. This application adds several new functionalities, such as alarm detection and handling, faster modification of the infusion rate during anesthetic procedures, data logging, etc. in a simpler way than using the controls on the pump syringe. To make it more flexible, in order to fulfill the requirements of a research application, modular programming was used. This application combines in a single output file, synchronized signals from drug infusion and commands that have been sent. This way it will allow a much faster post-processing of the obtained data, like correlations between induction and depth of anesthesia. For future developments, this application should offer a virtual TCI option towards the control of anesthesia depth. Considering the programming method used, it will be possible to include PK-PD algorithms and link their output to the stored data, while controlling drug infusion process.