Managing Criticalities of e-Health IoT systems

Lately, Internet-based solutions, brought by the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computation and storage technologies, have been driving revolutionary approaches in innumerable domains, including the sensitive domain of healthcare. Indicatively, real-time diagnosis of medical issues, telemedicine, remote monitoring of patients, as well as computer-assisted smart transportation in case of emergencies, are anticipated as Systems-of-Systems (SoS) that can execute several applications of different criticality, thus necessitating mission-critical and non-critical peripheral components. Therefore, managing the criticality of a specific component, application or service in such an environment, is of fundamental importance. In this respect, this paper discusses an approach to identify and model criticalities of healthcare IoT systems, as a first step to effectively manage them in system implementation and deployment. To do so, it explains the mixed-criticality characteristics of such systems, describing two principal use cases, that stem from the combination of novel technologies with classic health care practices, namely (a) a remote elderly monitoring platform, as well as (b) a smart ambulance system. The main cricalities anticipated in such systems are described, as well as open areas for future research are also identified.