Challenges and Research Directions in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems

Medical cyber-physical systems (MCPS) are lifecritical, context-aware, networked systems of medical devices. These systems are increasingly used in hospitals to provide highquality continuous care for patients. The need to design complex MCPS that are both safe and effective has presented numerous challenges, including achieving high assurance in system software, intoperability, context-aware intelligence, autonomy, security and privacy, and device certifiability. In this paper, we discuss these challenges in developing MCPS, some of our work in addressing them, and several open research issue

Challenges in the Regulatory Approval of Medical Cyber-Physical Systems

We are considering the challenges that regulators face in approving modern medical devices, which are software intensive and increasingly network enabled. We then consider assurance cases, which o er the means of organizing the evidence into a coherent argument demonstrating the level of assurance provided by a system, and discuss research directions that promise to make construction and evaluation of assurance cases easier and more precise. Finally, we discuss some recent trends that will further complicate the regulatory approval of medical cyber-physical systems

Medical Cyber-Physical Systems Development: A Forensics-Driven Approach

The synthesis of technology and the medical industry has partly contributed to the increasing interest in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems (MCPS). While these systems provide benefits to patients and professionals, they also introduce new attack vectors for malicious actors (e.g. financially-and/or criminally-motivated actors). A successful breach involving a MCPS can impact patient data and system availability. The complexity and operating requirements of a MCPS complicates digital investigations. Coupling this information with the potentially vast amounts of information that a MCPS produces and/or has access to is generating discussions on, not only, how to compromise these systems but, more importantly, how to investigate these systems. The paper proposes the integration of forensics principles and concepts into the design and development of a MCPS to strengthen an organization's investigative posture. The framework sets the foundation for future research in the refinement of specific solutions for MCPS investigations.Comment: This is the pre-print version of a paper presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Security, Privacy, and Trustworthiness in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems (MedSPT 2017

Federated Embedded Systems – a review of the literature in related fields

This report is concerned with the vision of smart interconnected objects, a vision that has attracted much attention lately. In this paper, embedded, interconnected, open, and heterogeneous control systems are in focus, formally referred to as Federated Embedded Systems. To place FES into a context, a review of some related research directions is presented. This review includes such concepts as systems of systems, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous computing, internet of things, and multi-agent systems. Interestingly, the reviewed fields seem to overlap with each other in an increasing number of ways