The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a system that could improve access to safe airway intubation. The smart video laryngoscope is focused on safe and consistent intubation outcomes with less training and skills required of medical personnel. This is key to lowering the costs of airway management and improving outcomes. Airway intubation procedures currently require training periods of three to four years to achieve consistently safe and high-quality outcomes. Even so, over 1 million major complications occur in the pre-hospital, emergency room, and intensive care units yearly. Many such complications result from first-pass attempt intubation failures. Lives and dollars may be saved via improved intubation. For example, U.S. military medics perform tracheostomies on the battlefield because of the inability to safely intubate injured warriors. Reducing the skills and knowledge needed to safely intubate patients via augmentation of the video laryngoscope may positively impact such areas. Moreover, digital imaging is used to perform procedures in medicine from surgery to central line placement. The infrastructure developed in this project may be used as a template for application in other procedures for tactical and strategic outputs.
This I-Corps project is based on the development of an automated collection and archiving system of high-fidelity data for tracheal intubation procedures in aggregate. This data will improve intubation outcomes through better clinical research, quality assurance, and training feedback. The lack of data related to tracheal intubation is currently the rate-limiting step to rapidly improving higher quality outcomes. This project is aimed at automating the recording and archiving of video-assisted intubations and then processing the data for both tactical and strategic uses. Tactically, the data may be processed in real-time by an expert system, and fed back onto the video laryngoscope display for real-time augmentation in order to provide the operator with decision support and guidance. Strategically, the recordings may be stored and processed to surveil intubation quality and quantity at any level ranging from individual performance over time to departmental, medical system, or national or worldwide performance. Currently, there is no practical way to surveil the critical procedure at any of these levels.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
