A Feedback Control Approach to Organic Drug Infusions Using Electrochemical Measurement

Target-controlled infusion of anesthesia is a closed-loop automated drug delivery method with a computer-aided control. Our goal is to design and test an automated drug infusion platform for propofol delivery in total intravenous anesthesia (TIVA) administration.

In the proposed method, a dilution chamber with first-order exponential decay characteristics was used to model the pharmacodynamics decay of a drug. The dilution chamber was connected to a flow system through an electrochemical cell containing an organic film-coated glassy carbon electrode as working electrode. To set up the feedback-controlled delivery platform and optimize its parameters, ferrocene methanol was used as a proxy of the propofol. The output signal of the sensor was connected to a PI controller, which prompted a syringe pump for feedback-controlled drug infusion.

The result is a bench-top drug infusion platform to automate the delivery of a propofol based on the measurement of concentration with an organic film-coated voltammetric sensor.

To evaluate the performance characteristics of the infusion platform, the propofol concentration in the dilution chamber was monitored with the organic film-coated glassy carbon electrode and the difference between the set and measured concentrations was assessed. The feasibility of measurement-based feedback-controlled propofol delivery is demonstrated and confirmed.

This platform will contribute to high-performance TIVA application of intravenous propofol anesthesia.