Just before Penny Gilliatt's colonoscopy she met the team that would be performing her procedure: the nurse, the doctor, and the robot that would be handling her anesthesia. The robot is a machine called Sedasys. It is currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to act as the anesthesiologist for healthy patients getting one of two procedures, colonoscopies and upper endoscopies. At many medical centers those procedures aren't currently monitored by an anesthesiologist.
That's the case at Virginia Mason Medical Center where Gilliatt is a nurse. She says she isn't worried that a machine is controlling her anesthesia. "There are people also in the room that are trained and they are also monitoring me," she said. "To me, this is just an extra layer of safety." Perhaps more important to Gilliatt, the machine allows her doctor to use a drug, called propofol, that kicks in…
