Distributed Software Platform for Automation and Control of General Anaesthesia

A parallel computer architecture and a distributed software platform for automation and control of general anesthesia is proposed in this paper. The system is a prototype research platform, intended to help on the development, simulation and test of new control algorithms for general anesthesia. It must be safe when used in real tests and flexible enough to allow the integration of new software modules. The system is composed by two computers, with the specific tasks of anesthesia control and process supervision. The platform makes use of TANGO, a specialized framework for distributed control systems, which provides software mechanisms useful to fulfill the project requirements. The architecture and the set of mechanisms proposed in this paper provide a high degree of flexibility to research on control algorithms, while ensuring the safeness of the whole procedure.