Remote Monitoring and Artificial Intelligence: Outlook for 2050

Abstract

Remote monitoring and artificial intelligence will become common and intertwined in anesthesiology by 2050. In the intraoperative period, technology will lead to the development of integrated monitoring systems that will integrate multiple data streams and allow anesthesiologists to track patients more effectively. This will free up anesthesiologists to focus on more complex tasks, such as managing risk and making value-based decisions. This will also enable the continued integration of remote monitoring and control towers having profound effects on coverage and practice models. In the PACU and ICU, the technology will lead to the development of early warning systems that can identify patients who are at risk of complications, enabling early interventions and more proactive care. The integration of augmented reality will allow for better integration of diverse types of data and better decision-making. Postoperatively, the proliferation of wearable devices that can monitor patient vital signs and track their progress will allow patients to be discharged from the hospital sooner and receive care at home. This will require increased use of telemedicine, which will allow patients to consult with doctors remotely. All of these advances will require changes to legal and regulatory frameworks that will enable new workflows that are different from those familiar to today’s providers.

Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Perioperative Medicine

“…In this paper, the author has achieved the objective of providing a complete overview of its applications from preoperative risk assessment to the postoperative phase. It is intriguing to note how both the applications and the applicability of AI in perioperative medicine have increased year by year: if we compare this review with those published a couple of years ago, we note that from a fragmented approach where AI was developed to carry out specific tasks (such as risk prediction or the prediction of specific events with the aim of creating clinical support tools) [3], a holistic technology is being developed which globally embraces the entire perioperative period and that could potentially revolutionize the perioperative medicine we know today, as described in the fascinating article by Feinstein et al [4]. In the future, we will have the opportunity to use a machine learning-driven perioperative risk stratification interoperable with a control tower placed into the operating compartment and/or with the operating room anesthesiological machines and thus create a continuum between the preoperative and perioperative phases.…”

“…What is now certain is that we cannot ignore the existence of AI. As described in the papers by Singam and Feinstein, AI is beginning to be seen as an extension and an enhancement of human capabilities [2,4]. In this context, it is impossible not to turn our gaze toward the transhumanist theories.…”