Title
Analysis of Safety-Critical Computer Failures in Medical Devices
Abstract
Malfunctioning medical devices are one of the leading causes of serious injury and death in the US. Between 2006 and 2011, 5,294 recalls and approximately 1.2 million adverse events were reported to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Almost 23 percent of these recalls were due to computer-related failures, of which approximately 94 percent presented medium to high risk of severe health consequences (such as serious injury or death) to patients. This article investigates the causes of failures in computer-based medical devices and their impact on patients by analyzing human-written descriptions of recalls and adverse event reports obtained from public FDA databases. The authors characterize computer-related failures by deriving fault classes, failure modes, recovery actions, and number of devices affected by the recalls. This analysis is used as a basis for identifying safety issues in life-critical medical devices and providing insights on the future challenges in the design of safety-critical medical devices.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1109/MSP.2013.49
IEEE Security & Privacy
Keywords
Field
DocType
computer-related failure,safety-critical computer failures,safety-critical medical device,serious injury,public fda databases,computer-based medical device,million adverse event,us food,medical devices,medical device,adverse event,life-critical medical device,fda,security,failure analysis
Computer science,Computer security,Biomedical equipment,Adverse effect,Drug administration
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
11
4
1540-7993
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
1.64
2
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Homa Alemzadeh19516.26
Zbigniew Kalbarczyk21896159.48
Ravishankar K. Iyer33489504.32
Jai Raman4101.64