At UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, a small device is quietly doing what doctors and nurses have done manually for decades — keeping patients breathing at just the right oxygen level. And it is doing that job better than humans alone could manage.
A clinical trial called SAVE-O2 AI, published in JAMA Internal Medicine and presented at the Military Health System Research Symposium, tested an automated oxygen delivery system called the O2matic PRO100 across four U.S. hospitals. The results were striking. Patients whose oxygen was managed by the AI system spent 85 percent of their time in the target range, compared to just 63 percent for those receiving standard care — a gap of 22 percentage points.
The trial enrolled 300 adults who were hospitalized with conditions including acute respiratory illness, traumatic injury, burns, and surgical recovery. Half received oxygen adjusted by clinicians in the traditional way — periodic manual checks and adjustments. The other half wore a small sensor on their fingertip called a pulse oximeter, which used light to measure blood oxygen levels continuously. The PRO100 system read those measurements in real time and automatically adjusted oxygen flow without waiting for a nurse or respiratory therapist to intervene.
The benefit went beyond simply hitting the target more often. Patients in the automated group spent less time with both low oxygen levels — a condition called hypoxemia — and high oxygen levels, called hyperoxemia. Neither extreme is harmless. Too little oxygen can damage organs; too much may cause problems as well. The system also required fewer manual adjustments from clinical staff. Notably, patients experienced no increase in serious side effects.
"Oxygen is one of the most widely used therapies in medicine, yet even in 2026, it is still managed largely through repeated manual adjustments," said Adit Ginde, MD, MPH, senior associate dean for clinical research and professor of emergency medicine at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine and the study's principal investigator. "Our findings show that autonomous oxygen titration can help patients remain in their target range more consistently while reducing both underoxygenation and overoxygenation. This technology has the potential to fundamentally change how supplemental oxygen is delivered in both civilian and military medicine."
The researchers acknowledged that hospitals will need more data before adopting such systems broadly. Future studies are planned to examine whether the automation reduces workload for nurses and respiratory therapists, freeing them to focus on other aspects of patient care. But the early evidence suggests that when it comes to keeping patients in the oxygen sweet spot, a tireless machine may outpace human hands.
"Oxygen levels can change quickly in hospitalized patients," said David Douin, MD, MSc, associate professor of anesthesiology at CU Anschutz and the study's first author. "This system responds in real time, helping patients spend more time in their target oxygen range with less manual adjustment."