Services and Monitors for Dependability Assessment of Mobile Health Monitoring Systems

The problem of failure detection in mHealth monitoring systems is becoming more critical, and the use of wireless technologies and commodity hardware/software platforms pose new challenges to their correct functioning. Remote and continuous monitoring of patients' vital signs aims to improve the quality of life of patients. Such applications, however, are particularly critical from the point of view of dependability. Wireless channels can be affected by packet loss, and cheap and wireless-enabled medical devices can exhibit wrong readings, inducing the medical staff to make wrong decisions. In this chapter, the authors present the results of a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) conducted to identify the dependability threats of health monitoring systems and a set of services and monitors for the assurance of high degrees of dependability to mobile health monitoring systems. Moreover, the authors describe a case study realized to detect failures at runtime.