Flexible, Intelligent and Environmentally Efficient Anaesthesia Machines

在COVID-19大流行期间，麻醉机提供了大部分所需的紧急额外重症护理需求。然而，使用这些机器进行重症监护通气的问题，如湿度控制，不熟悉的用户界面和不适合不适的COVID患者的基本通气模式被强调。在重症监护中能够使用挥发性麻醉剂（如七氟烷）但无需清除的潜在获益也很明显，尤其是当IV镇静储备几乎用完时。挥发性麻醉剂由于这些具有高全球变暖潜力的化合物的环境压力而正在发生变化-它们占NHS碳足迹的5%，现在是政府指导方针和目标的目标。麻醉剂回收系统已经开发出来，并将于2021年上市，有可能改变多年来几乎没有重大创新的成熟麻醉机市场。目前库存的麻醉机并没有被设计成与这些系统良好地配合使用，因此，有机会开发能够具有大流行后所需的灵活性和性能的麻醉机，并且还具有环境效率以提供麻醉的未来，并且允许在整个医院空间中使用挥发性麻醉剂而无需净化和管道气体系统。这有可能大大降低NHS的基础设施成本超过麻醉机成本。该项目是开发，测试和建立两个原型麻醉机，优化回收系统和灵活性，基于知识产权的半岛医疗技术。该技术提供了一种将环境效率需求与COVID-19大流行的教训相结合的方法，并产生了下一代麻醉机。麻醉机市场是一个成熟的市场，创新有限，进入壁垒高，由美国和德国的公司领导。COVID-19的变化和环境压力为新技术和进入者提供了通常被拒绝的空间。这得益于英国呼吸机挑战赛中开发的呼吸机技术，以生成基于英国的解决方案。

Anaesthesia machines have provided most of the emergency extra critical care needs required during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, issues in the use of these machines for intensive care ventilation such as moisture control, unfamiliar user interfaces and basic ventilation modes unsuitable for unwell COVID patients were highlighted. The potential benefits of being able to use volatile anaesthetic such as Sevoflurane but absence of required scavenging in intensive care was also apparent, especially when IV sedation stocks nearly ran out. Volatile anaesthesia is changing due to environmental pressure on these compounds with high global warming potential- they make up 5% of the NHS carbon footprint and are now a target of government guidelines and targets.Anaesthetic recycling systems have been developed and are coming to market in 2021 with the potential to change a mature anaesthetic machine market with little significant innovation for many years. The current stock of anaesthetic machines are not designed to work well with these systems and therefore, there is an opportunity to develop anaesthetic machines that are capable of the flexibility and performance required post-pandemic and also that are environmentally efficient to deliver the future of anaesthesia and allow use of volatile anaesthetic agents throughout the hospital space without scavenging and piped gas systems. This has the potential to significantly reduce infrastructure costs for the NHS in excess of the anaesthetic machine costs.This project is to develop, test and build two prototype anaesthetic machines that are optimised for recycling systems and flexibility, based on intellectual property from Peninsula Medical Technology. The technology provides a way to integrate the needs for environmental efficiency with the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and generate the next generation of anaesthetic machines. It also provides the necessary regulatory input and independent assessment of environmental goals required.The anaesthetic machine market is a mature market with limited innovation and high barriers to entry, led by companies in the USA and Germany. The changes from COVID-19 and environmental pressures enable space for new technologies and entrants that would typically be denied. This is assisted by access to developed ventilator technologies from the UK ventilator challenge to generate a UK-based solution.