A generic approach for capturing reliability in medical cyber-physical systems

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are slowly emerging to dominate our world through their tight integration between the computational and physical components. While the reliability evaluation of physical systems is well-studied, the one referring to CPSs is difficult due to the fact that software systems do not degrade, as they follow a well-defined failure model like in physical systems. Henceforth, a great attention has been given to tackle the challenge of reliability in CPSs, especially in the field of Medical CPSs (MCPSs) that are being considered as a powerful candidate for healthcare applications. This paper proposes a generic approach for effectively measuring reliability in MCPSs, taking into consideration the multiple MCPSs’ applications that exist. The proposed approach captures the MCPS’s reliability by initially modelling its components, accompanied with the selection of the evaluation environment, which is finally being followed by the failure analysis, and the reliability estimation, which are necessary for deciding whether a MCPS is considered as reliable or not.