Method and Apparatus for Delivering Pharmaceuticals Based on Real-Time Monitoring of Tissue States

• US 20080167638A1
• Filed: 01/04/2007
• Published: 07/10/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/04/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Rao, Ravishankar, Cecchi, Guillermo A., Kozloski, James R.
• Application Number:
  US11/619,688
• Publication Number:
  US 20080167638A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 604/503
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4839 combined with drug delivery
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/037 Emission tomography
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/54 Control of apparatus or devices for radiation diagnosis
• CPC Class Codes: A61M 2005/14208 with a programmable infusion control system, characterised by the infusion program
• CPC Class Codes: A61M 5/1723 using feedback of body parameters, e.g. blood-sugar, pressure measurement of body parameters A61B5/00

Abstract

A method and apparatus for delivering a drug to a bodily tissue, measuring the interaction between the drug and a specific tissue in real-time, and adjusting the rate of drug delivery in real-time in order to achieve a desired state of drug-tissue interaction are disclosed herein.

Claims

1. A method for delivering a drug to a bodily tissue, comprising

delivering a drug to a patient;

measuring an interaction between the drug and a bodily tissue in real-time; and

adjusting a rate of drug delivery to the patient in real-time based on the measurement.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein measuring the interaction comprises estimating the steady state concentration of the drug in the bodily tissue at a given delivery rate.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein measuring the interaction comprises in vivo imaging of the tissue by positron emission tomography.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the rate comprises:

extracting a feature from the measured interaction;

comparing the feature to a reference state; and

computing a control signal based on the comparison to adjust the rate of drug delivery.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein analyzing the measured interaction, extracting the feature, comparing the feature to the reference state, and computing the control signal are performed by high-performance computing.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the control signal is computed using a proportional-integral-differential control algorithm.

7. An apparatus for delivering a drug to a bodily tissue, comprising:

a delivery mechanism for a drug;

a measuring device for measuring a state of a bodily tissue; and

an information handling device for computing an amount of drug to be delivered given a current tissue state measurement and a desired tissue state.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the measuring device is an electrical or a chemical monitoring device.

9. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the delivery mechanism is a drug pump with access to a patient'"'"'s blood stream.

10. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the information handling device is a high-performance computing device.

11. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the information handling device uses a proportional-integral-differential control algorithm to compute the amount of drug delivered.