Computer control for patient care

An overview is given of a number of computer-controlled drug administration schemes in clinical medicine. These range from systems which have been used on many patients in intensive care to experimental schemes which require further clinical evaluation. The control algorithms used vary from simple PI controllers to multi-mode adaptive techniques. Measurement of relevant clinical variables is often a major problem, and the use of extended Kalman filtering is described for the estimation of unmeasurable states. Recent developments in expert control are also described.