Anesthesiologists, Meet the Competition: McSleepy

May 13, 2008 -- The sexy doctors McDreamy and McSteamy from Grey's Anatomy make patients swoon with chiseled jaws and sultry glances. McSleepy, the world's first fully automated anesthesia machine, knocks patients out by administering drugs.

Right now McSleepy "is like a young resident who just started," said Thomas Hemmerling, an anesthesiologist at McGill University in Canada who helped design the device.

"The McSleepy you see in two years," he added, "will be as good as me on my best day."

McSleepy is a computer program hooked up to an anesthesia machine that gets information from sensors deployed across the patient's body. Those sensors monitor the three states that lead to general anesthesia: loss of pain, unconsciousness and muscle relaxation.

The anesthesiologist simply tells McSleepy what level of sedation is needed, and the computer tells the anesthesia machine which drugs, in what combination, to administer.

If a patient begins to wake up, feel pain, or overly relax, McSleepy detects the change and automatically delivers a dose of the appropriate drug to send the patient back to the predetermined level. In scientific terms it's known as a closed loop feedback system.

Shane Sheppard, President of the Canadian Association of Anesthesiologists, says McSleepy is interesting.