Anaesthesia Monitoring: From Conventional to AI-Enabled Data Acquisition Methods

It is widely recognized that the timely acquisition and presentation of accurate physiological data is a vital aid to the anaesthesiologist in monitoring and maintaining the well-being of a patient undergoing surgery. Collecting, storing, synchronizing, integrating, evaluating, and retrieving pertinent information from patient data remains very difficult due to limited computer power, the need for specialized software, inconsistency between monitoring devices, and inadequate data storage. This paper introduces the general steps of data acquisition in anaesthesia and summarizes some data acquisition systems. It also introduces some applications of the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI) to data acquisition, illustrating how AI techniques may be used to advantage to assist the anaesthesiologist in monitoring and interpreting such data.