Modeling and Simulation Support for System of Systems Engineering Applications

Chapter 18Medical Enhancements to Sustain Life during Extreme Trauma Care

L. Drew Pihera¹, Nathan L. Adams¹, Tommer R. Ender¹, and Matthew L. Paden²

¹ Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, GA, USA

² Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

18.1 INTRODUCTION

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a method of providing temporary heart or lung support to severely ill patients. While lifesaving for the patient, it is a complex and demanding therapy for the caregivers, involving blood traveling outside of the body in tubes and then passing through an artificial lung before returning to the patient. Complication rates remain high and require a dedicated trained person for continuous monitoring in addition to the patient’s nurse. ECMO is a therapy, not a device, and there are multiple ways to achieve this goal of adequate heart and lung support. There is no Food and Drug Administration (FDA) device approved to provide ECMO in the United States. Individual centers develop their own ECMO system from parts that are FDA approved for uses in other clinical settings. This leads to wide variation in systems between institutions. Additionally, these part choices are often made with very little engineering input and with little regard to how these individual components will work when assembled together.

In this chapter, we investigate several ECMO circuits, characterize the system of systems (SoS) architecture using Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), and offer ...