"If a patient ends up dying because of preventable circumstances, that's not going to be acceptable because we are trying to save money"<p>Let's not pretend that every anaesthesiologist has a perfect track record. Machines can make mistakes with horrible consequences, but so can humans. Similar arguments are used against many forms of valuable automation, such as self driving cars. The benefit of using machines is that mistakes are quantifiable and can be fixed en masse. There's no way to know if any given anaesthesiologist is having an off day and there's no one fix for the potential problem. Most automation issues can be fixed with time and more data.<p>The outlook is grim for automating similar medical tasks because of the same problem that Sedasys is facing: the human inclination towards turf protection. Professional organizations make a lot of dues money from their members, which is then use to purchase enough clout to delay the FDA at least once. No one wants to lose a job that they've committed their lives to and the threat of automation extends across all of society. But we can't afford to be the species that shoots itself in the foot by refusing to reap the benefits of ever advancing society.<p>I look around and see a world filled with repetitive and mundane tasks. I love it when one of those jobs is automated away. Congratulations to Johnson & Johnson and I wish them the best in their fight against our own backward tendencies.
I opted out of anesthesia for my last colonoscopy, so that I could watch. (They still insisted on setting me up for potential sedation, I suppose in case I experienced distress mid-procedure, but it wasn't needed.) The procedure was quick (maybe 15 minutes); the discomfort was on the same order as a prostate exam, plus some pain of bloating that came and went repeatedly as pressurized air is used.<p>It seems the main dangers the anesthesiologist needs to watch for are those caused by the anesthesia itself, so going without it entirely felt like the safest option to me. And since I wasn't drugged, I could drive myself home and resume normal activities immediately. I suspect far more people could skip sedation for this procedure, and any risks (for example from some patients panicking) are likely outweighed by the extra care taken when a patient is a conscious observer.
Nice peek at why Health Costs are so screwed up :-) You could ask the patient (use the machine it's covered, use the Anaesthesiologist and pay his fee (up to $2,000)) Of course that sort of approach will be made out to be threatening the poor and those unable to pay with a risk of death.<p>I've known a couple of anaesthesiologists in my life and something the article didn't mention was that their malpractice insurance premiums go up linearly with their patients seen (I can't verify that directly but believed them when they said it). The argument was that they are one of the 'most sued' doctors on the planet. Hard to sue a machine of course, we'll see.
I'm pretty sympathetic to anesthesiologists after another WSJ article I read a few years back.<p>According to that article, anesthesiologists used to have some of the highest malpractice premiums. Rather than lobbying for liability caps as some other physicians have been doing, they did a lot of analysis of their own data, and figured out how have a lot fewer patients die on them. Now they have some of the lowest malpractice premiums.
The Wall Street Journal is losing relevance - because they have made this article inaccessible/difficult to access, I won't read it, and I'll get this same information from another source.<p>It's a brave, new world.
The article appears to completely ignore the issues of liability and malpractice and whatnot, which are critical to any discussion of anesthesia. This makes the article somewhat useless.
My thoughts:
<a href="http://marojejian.tumblr.com/post/62339785940/rise-of-the-machines-anesthesiologists-are-not-safe" rel="nofollow">http://marojejian.tumblr.com/post/62339785940/rise-of-the-ma...</a><p>On the one hand the benefits of such technology are amazing. On the other, it’s scary to see such high-end professions encroached upon by machines.<p>But the resolution here is the same as for the cashier or the buggy whip driver. We need this technology, but we need to ensure that:<p>a) Our economy is flexible enough to rapidly develop new industries that will require human workers.<p>b) Our workers have the education, the infrastructure, the incentives and the entrepreneurial mindset needed to move with (or ahead of?) the market into new fields without calamity.<p>But will there always be new applications for humans? Well not always…. but that would imply a situation where AI has truly supplanted us in all respects, and our technology can supply all our needs without us lifting a finger.<p>Call me when that happens. Sounds nice.
future improvements in anesthetic agents, intubation devices, and monitoring tools will probably allow nurse anesthetists to do more and more what anesthesiologists do today.