Uncertainty and its Effect on Optimal Multidrug Control of Hemodynamic Variables

Computer aided control in biomedical applications is gaining more and more popularity due to numerous research studies that have proven the efficiency of automatic control over manual dosing, which is highly susceptible to human errors. Optimal drug dosing is best achieved using automatic control, which triggers important benefits in terms of both costs and patient side-effects. However, mathematical models for patients are highly susceptible to large modeling uncertainty. A predictive control algorithm is designed in this paper for optimal multidrug control of hemodynamic variables. Improved closed loop performance is obtained compared to similar control strategies, for ± 30% modeling uncertainty. The simulation results demonstrate that predictive control is a feasible solution for optimal drug dosing. An analysis of the closed loop performance for significant patient variability shows that controllers tuned using a nominal patient model often fail to achieve desired robustness. To limit the effect of modeling uncertainty, the prediction model should be updated using an online identification tool to extract patient features.