Cyber Physical Systems – Situation Analysis - Energetics Meetings ...

Cyber Physical Systems – Situation AnalysisDRAFT – March 9, 2012intensive. Use of static-analysis tools on implemented code is limited. Development platforms do notfacilitate integration of hardware, software, and human factors in design, development, andmanufacturing.BROAD CHALLENGES AND BARRIERSCPS deployment and integration in healthcare faces general and specific challenges. The generalchallenges are related to the overall cyber-physical infrastructure: hardware, connectivity, softwaredevelopment and communications. The specific challenges have to do with specialized processes at theintersection of control and sensing, sensor fusion and decision making, security, and the compositionalityof CPS.General Infrastructural IssuesHardware: Medical device systems are challenging current regulations. The most striking examples areclosed-loop systems or systems that are networks of other devices. These devices have differentfunctionalities: they deliver drugs; they monitor physiological characteristics or regulate patient functions,like breathing. Clinicians must collect, analyze and react and make a decision based on this information.In the operating room, for example, one may find many devices providing life-supporting functions andmultiple medical professionals interoperating based on information provided by the various devices (andtheir own observations). Humans are subject to fatigue, miscommunication, information overload,distractions and other factors. These factors can combine to contribute to an undesirable outcome for thepatient.It is rather easy to collect device information using the commercially available digital technology. Thisinformation, after appropriately filtered, can be either presented to a clinician or it can be used by thedevice‘s computer to autonomously trigger some action. At the easy part of the spectrum this is alreadyhappening in the simultaneous display of data from different devices. To monitor patients with heartproblems, clinicians simultaneously display data from pulse oximeters, blood pressure devices and EKGs.At the difficult part of the spectrum, we can see devices that use input as a control signal, for exampledevices that deliver radiation treatment to a tumor in an organ that moves. Such devices can sense themovement and change appropriately the direction of the radiation beam.However, the way medical devices have been produced over the years has given rise to proprietarydevices that are not designed to interoperate with other devices. To make this suboptimal system work,practicioners have introduced ―stealth‖ networks, where information is transferred from device to deviceusing a memory stick, barcodes, a PDA, or even manual transfer through typing. Advanced networkingand distributed communication is needed in the cyberphysical architectures of the future medical devices.The information traveling in the network is either electronic health records of patients, or controlmeasurements, or in general computing processes. Realizing architectures of this kind will createcyberphysical medical devices of the next generation, where different component are plagued into thesame network.Multiple cyber-physical devices must interoperate together seamlessly at a very high level of robustness.Interoperability and closed loop systems appear to be the key for success. Computing and networkingtechnologies of the future deployed in medical devices and systems are likely to be interconnected inincreasingly complex open systems, with many heterogeneous components. The configuration of deviceswill be dynamic, determined by a variety of factors, including economic ones as well as medical57