Presented September 6th, 2023 at the APSF Stoelting Conference 2023 on “Emerging Medical Technologies – A Patient Safety Perspective on Wearables, Big Data and Remote Care”
PRESENTATION MATERIALS
ABOUT THE SPEAKER(S)
Kevin Tremper, PhD, MD
Kevin Tremper, PhD, MD
Professor of Anesthesiology
University of Michigan
Dr. Tremper received his MD from the University of California, Irvine after completing a PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. During his surgical internship at Harbor/UCLA and a critical care research fellowship with Will Shoemaker to follow, he conducted studies in animals and critically ill patients on various techniques for continuously monitoring oxygen and carbon dioxide. Because of this interest in tissue oxygen measurement and oxygen monitoring, he conducted the clinical testing of the first “artificial blood” product in 1981.
In January of 1983 he completed a residency in Anesthesiology at UCLA Medical Center and returned to the University of California, Irvine as a faculty member. He was appointed chair in 1985. He remained Associate Professor and Chair until 1990 when he accepted the position of Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan until he stepped down in 2019.
If you Google for the most cited articles on Transcutaneous Oxygen Monitoring (an early technique for noninvasive oxygen monitoring) or Pulse Oximetry both will be articles published by Dr Tremper. After approximately 15 years of research on continuous monitoring of respiratory gases, he switched his research emphasis to information systems to manage clinical data for acute perioperative care. In the mid-1990s he initiated a co-development effort with a software company to create a perioperative information management system to be used for patient care, education, and clinical outcomes research. Starting in 2008, the department initiated a nationwide/worldwide perioperative outcomes database consortium, the Multicenter Perioperative Outcomes Group (MPOG). This organization allows data sharing from multiple institutions throughout the United States and Europe. Having this broad database involving all surgical procedures from a variety of institutions have enabled retrospective database queries on a grand scale for the first time.
Also starting in 2008, Dr. Tremper initiated work on the development of a new generation monitoring and decision support system: AlertWatch®. This readily identifiable, organ icon-based alerting system derives data from physiologic monitors, EMRs, history & physicals, and laboratory values updated every 10 seconds. These surveillance/safety/decision support systems have been FDA cleared for OR, ICU and Labor & Delivery. In 2022, AlertWatch was acquired by BioIntellisense Inc and is being marketed by Medtronic Inc.
Dr. Tremper has over 300 publications and is the Past President of the Society of Academic Anesthesiology Chairs, the Morton Society, and the Association of University Anesthesiologists.