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Comment by rdudekul | Hacker News Reader

The technology that goes into a self driving car is possibly far more sophisticated than this new machine. Anesthesiologists must have lobbied hard to stop this machine from a more wide spread usage. However the writing on the wall is clear. Machines in many cases are better than Doctors and they will continue to become better more rapidly than say Doctors with their experience. I wish US FDA gives a chance to these innovations and slowly tackle the rising healthcare costs.

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Passenger aircraft can take off, fly to their destination, and land all on their own, but it hasn't removed pilots from their jobs. Automation doesn't catch all edge-cases, and in life-or-death situations, there's always going to be human oversight.

Yes, some standard procedures on ASA1 patiens do not require a lot of sophistication. However do not underestimate how hard anesthesiology is, while 90% routine, 10% is incredibly complex stressfull scenarios in trauma/emergency, surgical complications, adverse events. Its much more than just heart rate, RR, oxymetry etc. Its knowledge about medicine interactions, organ systems, physiological systems and the skill to perform under immense pressure (trying to provide a permanent airway through facial trauma or large bore IV access for fluid replacements on a patient in volumetric shock) And while uncommon it can happen during standard procedures in ASA1 patients. I'd rather have the anesthesiologist close please.

As a quick sedation system these sound wonderfull though, for example for resetting joint dislocations in the OR where all emergency staff and equipment is already in place.

ASA1 == American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status classification system "Healthy person", e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASA_physical_status_classifica...

With an increasingly graying population in the US, rdudekul's hopes ... well, I suppose if you can decrease e.g. the ASA 1 need for anesthesiologists while they're still on tap if things go south, it'll overall help. But it's probably not going to get big, and will create triage like situations where people will needlessly die when there's no anesthesiologist to spare.

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