Michael Darwin proposes predicting when a biostasis team should be dispatched to a patient

Michael Darwin proposes predicting when a biostasis team should be dispatched to a patient

On July 13, Darwin published a 381-page review of medical methods for estimating the risk of death over months, weeks, days, and hours. He proposes combining these estimates in a single dashboard, so that preparations by the cryopreservation team can respond to changes in the patient’s condition.

In the new review, Darwin describes a problem that begins before cryopreservation. Biostasis preserves a person after legal death in the hope that future medicine will be able to help them. The team must begin cardiopulmonary support, cooling, and preparations for cryopreservation as quickly as possible to reduce the time during which the brain receives no blood flow. Darwin estimates that dispatching a team within the United States costs at least 60 thousand dollars.

A physician may tell the family that the patient has “days or weeks,” but that estimate does not indicate when to assemble specialists and transport the equipment. Some medical tools estimate the risk of death within the next few months. Others track the loss of the ability to walk and perform basic self-care. A third group predicts the final days in palliative care. In intensive care, physicians assess whether organ failure is accelerating. Darwin wants to connect these assessments to three decisions: when to alert the team, when to place it on standby, and when to dispatch it to the patient.

In February, Cryonics Monitoring introduced a ring that sounds an alarm when the wearer’s hand remains still for an extended period. It responds after a warning sign appears. Darwin describes an earlier stage: using the course of the illness, test results, breathing, and organ function to detect when the probability of cardiac arrest is rising rapidly. An early forecast gives the team time to reach the patient before cardiac arrest occurs.

The dashboard will need to be validated using real cases. Darwin draws the medical assessments from nursing homes, palliative oncology, and intensive care units. Their thresholds for people who have chosen biostasis still need to be compared with actual cases. Several signs of dying may result from the same general breakdown in the body’s function, so the software must account for the relationships among them instead of treating each sign as independent confirmation.

Darwin has compiled the indicators and time horizons needed for such a system. The system will require data from real cases, comparisons between forecasts and the actual time of cardiac arrest, and rules that connect the level of risk with travel time, team composition, and equipment preparation.