A failure modes and effects analysis of mobile health monitoring systems

Many solutions are emerging for the remote and continuous monitoring of unpredictable health problems, such as cardiac diseases. These are designed to be minimally invasive for health monitoring and based on smart and mobile technologies conformable to the human body, helping to improve considerably the autonomy and the quality of life of patients. Clearly, the correct functioning of these systems 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 since the inception of the system, in its design phase. Despite the criticality of the problem, there is still little knowledge about the typical failures that may affect the correct functioning of these systems. Without such knowledge, it becomes difficult to devise effective countermeasures to failure events. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) for a typical mobile health monitoring system. Based on past results and extensive studies, the analysis allowed to identify the main failures, their consequences, and possible causes, affecting the functional components of modern health monitoring systems. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media.