Present state of closed-loop drug delivery in anesthesia and intensive care

Although closed-loop systems have a long tradition in engineering, their continued use for patient care is limited to the last 20 years, with the exception of BICKFORD's pioneering work in 1950. During the past 2 years it has been shown that automated closed-loop systems for drug delivery can provide unique study designs for clinical research allowing experimental setups not realizable by traditional means. It is, however, evident that a lot of research and development has to be done on therapeutic closed-loop systems to solve the many questions related to their reliability, safety and use in the routine clinical setting.