Dependability analysis of a vital sign monitoring application

The design and realization of health monitoring applications has attracted the interest of large communities both from industry and academia. Currently many cardiac diseases are unpredictable; remote and continuous health monitoring for reliable detection of these problems becomes very useful for older people and patients. Clearly, the correct functioning of a health monitoring application is very critical for the safety of patients, hence their practical application calls for stringent dependability requirements which need to be assessed against potential failure modes. The paper describes a dependability analysis of a long-term wearable vital signs monitoring system which can real-time measure physiological signs such as SpO2 (saturation of arterial oxygen) equipped with Bluetooth connection. We propose a system architecture for pervasive healthcare that will open up new opportunities for continuous and reliable monitoring of assisted and independent-living residents by means of a set of services already included in Uranus middleware and of new added services to achieve a higher dependability level. Finally we propose a Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) to study the possible failure modes for this kind of system and to perform the dependability analysis.