A Model-based Approach for Managing Criticality Requirements in e-Health IoT Systems

Internet-based solutions, enhanced by Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud computing, are constantly driving revolutionary approaches in multiple domains, including healthcare. Indicatively, telemedicine, real-time diagnosis and remote monitoring of patients, are expected to transform the healthcare domain. These systems may offer several services of different criticality, necessitating safety-/mission-critical core components and non-critical peripheral components; in other words, they are complex, mixed-criticality System-of-Systems (SoS). To understand and design such systems, engineers must be facilitated with the appropriate modeling tools. In this work, we explore the application of model-based design, using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML), of IoT e-Health systems, emphasizing criticality requirements. We focus on the Remote Elderly Monitoring System (REMS) use case, combining IoT technologies with classic healthcare practices, to demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach. Requirements comprise a basic concept of a systematic model-driven methodology that enables the successful management of the criticalities in system design, implementation and deployment. In the REMS use case, identified criticalities are modeled as SysML requirements, while SysML constraints and parametric diagrams are employed to describe and verify quantitative criticality requirements.