You are about to undergo invasive surgery, and the anaesthesiologist begins to administer the drugs that will put you to sleep while he sits in a lab 8,000 kilometres away.

This situation is now a reality thanks to an interface developed by Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and his team from McGill’s department of anaesthesia.

Several years ago, Hemmerling created McSleepy, a software system that automatically infuses anaesthetizing drugs into patients. On August 30, his team operated the software remotely, using an Internet connection to monitor patient body signals, transmit system commands, and video chat with doctors performing the surgery abroad.

“It’s an extraordinary technological development that could be enormously useful to help with anaesthesia in remote locations,” said Fernando Cervero, director of McGill’s Anaesthesia Research Unit.

Collaborating with Dr. Cedrick Zaouter’s team at the University of Pisa, Hemmerling’s group sat at their “anaesthesia cockpit” in Montreal and anaesthetized 20 patients undergoing thyroid surgery in Italy. In addition to using automated systems, Hemmerling conducted a preoperative assessment of the patients using Skype video conferencing, including discussion of patient history and measurement of patients’ airways using rulers held by staff in Italy.

“We had two automated systems communicating with each other [and] communication was controlled through an automated system with us here in Montreal,” Hemmerling said.

From the cockpit, Hemmerling’s team gave the system commands to administer the drugs for general anaesthesia.

“The systems are specifically designed so that they deliver anaesthesia in the safest possible way, probably even safer than if you do it manually. There are many, many safety checks,” he said.

During surgery, laptops showed four video screens monitoring the surgery and various biological signals of the patients, providing doctors with the same information they would have if they were present in the room.

“If for some reason the local doctors don’t like what the automated system is doing, they can always stop it or override it,” Hemmerling said. “Even if communication breaks down, the local automated system would still function during our re-establishment of the connection.”

A particular focus of the test procedure was to determine the frequency of manual overrides or Internet misconnections. Neither problem occurred in any of the surgeries, though.

Hemmerling and other anaesthetists envision multiple potential uses for the combined technology of video conferencing and automatic anaesthesia.

“There is big incentive from the World Health Organization to develop more and more of what we call ‘telemedicine,” he said. “Transcontinental anaesthesia is definitely part of this.”

Many countries in Africa have very few anaesthesiologists. An automated system, Hemmerling said, could make anaesthesia more accessible even in remote areas.

“At this point, we do not have enough specialists in remote areas, even in Canada when you go to rural areas up north,” Hemmerling said. “Even if you are a specialist, you might have to deal with very complicated cases where you would prefer to have an automated system helping you and an expert team as a backup, with whom you can consult in real time.”

Besides helping isolated doctors, Hemmerling said he foresees the possible use of the technology as a teaching tool for training residents and for providing preoperative assessments remotely without having patients travel to the hospital.

Groups in the military and space industries have also expressed an interest in making use of the technology for surgery in locations with few or no specialist doctors available.

Steven Backman, chair of McGill’s department of anaesthesia, emphasized the novelty of Hemmerling’s process.

“You are able in real time to get a lot of biological information about the patient and also control the delivery of drugs over a long distance,” Backman said. “It’s important to bear in mind that it doesn’t replace the anaesthesiologist, but it certainly allows you to provide anaesthesia care with the input from doctors over any distance.

“We’re very excited about this,” he added. “We look forward to seeing how this is going to evolve. It’s very, very new technology.”

The Quebec Student Roundtable (QSR, or TaCEQ in French), a provincial student lobbying group, is gearing up its campaign for the coming school year.

TaCEQ represents the student associations of the undergraduate and graduate students of Laval University, the graduate students of the University of Sherbrooke, and the Students’ Society of McGill University. According to SSMU Vice-President External Myriam Zaidi, the organization represents roughly 65,000 students in total.

“We’ve been working already in conjunction with these associations that are a part of TaCEQ right now,” Zaidi said. “We meet once a month, at a roundtable of the associations.”

TaCEQ, which was started last fall, spent much the last year drafting its bylaws and campaigning to introduce paid practicums for Education students. This year, however, TaCEQ plans on tackling a number of issues facing Quebec universities, including the tuition hikes scheduled to be rolled out in 2012.

“We are trying to get different actors in Quebec to endorse alternative solutions to underfunding instead of tuition increases, whether it’s businesses, university administration, or the government,” Zaidi said.

The coming tuition hikes are being approached in different ways by the different student lobby group, throughout the province. Others include the Quebec Federation of University Students (FEUQ), and the Student Union Solidarity Association (ASSE).

“They all go at it differently to a certain extent just to make sure that they offer something different to their constituents,” Zaidi said. “We will be going at it in the sense that we really want increased government funding for universities.”

This differs from FEUQ’s campaign, which, according to their website, is focused largely on the management of finances in university administrations.

However, there is some overlap when these different groups come together at the Table of University Partners (TPU). “It’s a roundtable of all the partners in Quebec universities. That includes student groups, professors’ unions, teaching assistant unions, and others,” said Zaidi.

TaCEQ is in the process of obtaining recognition by the Quebec government, which would allow them to get government funding. Zaidi is also working on increasing the group’s visibility at McGill by promoting TaCEQ’s English-language acronym, QSR.

Starting as “Safety Day” at McDonald Campus and continuing downtown over the next four days, the second annual Safety Week took place at McGill last week. The event was opened by Principal Heather Munroe-Blum, and included a series of presentations, games, and a closing barbecue.

“Safety Week’s purpose is really to get as much of our information out to the community, and for the community members to know exactly what we do, and who we are,” said Pierre Barbarie, associate director of university safety.

A Safety Week tent was located on Lower Field where tables representing security, emergency measures and fire prevention, and environmental health and safety were accessible to students and staff.

In addition, some student clubs, such as McGill First Aid and McGill Walksafe, were at the tent, as well non-McGill organizations like the Commission for Health and Security at Work (CSST), who showcased what they do for the university community.

“That was a positive for us too, to really get our partners involved in Safety Week,” Barbarie said.

Issues including hostile intruder, ergonomics (health and safety), and self-defence were among the topics of the presentations. Ten different sessions were held throughout the week, which people could attend by registering online.

While last year’s concept was kept the same in terms of what McGill Security offers to the community, Barbarie explained the marketing and advertising aspects were done differently this time around. Emails in the form of “All-notes” to students and staff were used as an attempt to attract more people, and the registration was done through myMcGill, which brought a lot of positive feedback.

“We tried to get out there a little more in terms of trying to attract more people, so we did a little more advertising,” Barbarie said.

On average, attendance increased to 25 people per presentation compared to six or seven last year according to Barbarie. The number of people who came into the tent and stopped at the tables was also greater than it was last year.

“We really want to keep this an annual thing [and] visibility is huge, so we definitely want to increase the numbers,” Barbarie said.