Safety Analysis of a Medical Robot for Tele-echography

Abstract

International audienceAmong many types of medical equipment, ultrasound diagnosticsystems are widely used because of their convenience and safety.Performing an ultrasound examination involves good eye-handcoordination and the ability to integrate the acquired informationover time and space. Some of these specialized skills may lack insome healthcare centers or for emergency situations.Tele-consultation is therefore an interesting alternative toconventional care. Development of a high performance remotediagnostic system, which enables an expert operator at thehospital to examine a patient at home, in an emergency vehicle orin a remote clinic, may have a very significant added value.Therefore a robotic tele-ultrasound system is proposed in order torealize the examination in small towns or cities without needinghighly qualified medical staff. This system for RoboticTele-Echography (TER) is designed and developed by a Frenchconsortium composed of universities, hospitals and industrialscompanies. In such systems safety is critical. The robot share itsworking area with the operator and have a close interaction withthe patient. Safe behavior in all circumstances is guaranteed bycomplete management of hazards (their identification, evaluation,and control) throughout the life cycle of the system, particularlyin the early stages. Hence, system safety activities aremulti-disciplinary and entirely linked with systems theory andsystems engineering. In this context, pieces of information areusually corrupted because of the great number of experts usingvarious languages. To handle this issue we studied a safetyanalysis process integrated with one modeling language used forsystems specification and design. The size, complexity andcriticality of many of today's robotic applications led us tochoose object-oriented development and the industrial standard UML(Unified Modeling Language) as the language. We also chose UML forits fault prevention characteristics, and for its expression powerin the robotics field