PK/PD model based design of PID control for closed-loop anesthesia

This paper investigates the use of a recently developed pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic model for the design of a Proportional–Integral–Derivative controller for total intravenous anesthesia. In particular, we consider the administration of propofol as manipulated variable and the BIS signal as the process variable, and we propose a personalized approach to tune the controller by using the Eleveld model. Simulation results show that the personalized controller outperforms the population-based one, which fails to provide the required clinical performance for elderly people. Thus, the development of a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic model specifically devised for control design purposes would be beneficial to provide a truly personalized control law and to increase the overall performance.