CAREER: Safe and Secure Network Control for Smart and Connected Hospitals

随着无线网络的可靠性和普及程度的提高，越来越多的关键系统，如车载网络、军事系统和应急系统，都依赖于无线网络。在现代医院，无线技术将被用于互连医疗、传感和计算设备，以及电子健康记录系统，以实现智能医疗应用，如实时患者监测，这可以显著提高护理质量。研究人员在为关键系统设计网络解决方案方面积累了丰富的知识，然而，他们中的大多数都将网络设计与应用环境隔离开来：非常有限的应用环境上下文，例如位置和用户身份，被考虑。不同的是，在联网医院的医疗应用中，医疗系统的网络和安全功能通常与医疗环境紧密结合，例如患者的生理状态和护理人员的工作流程。由于通过连接的医疗设备和传感器可以实时获得这些环境信息，因此该项目解决了在安全要求下调查并将环境集成到网络控制中的紧迫挑战。如果研究成功，将降低医院有线网络的危害和部署成本，促进患者、医生和临床支持系统之间实时、高效的信息交换。本工作建立了包含上下文信息的基础网络模型，在满足不同医疗应用的安全可靠性要求的前提下，提供了网络解决方案。具体来说，这项工作的智力贡献是：i)网络医疗设备、传感器、电子健康记录和临床决策支持系统提供了关于患者和医疗程序的实时和丰富的上下文信息。我们研究了医疗环境与医疗系统网络和安全功能之间的关系，并创建了基于环境的网络和安全控制模型。ii)根据医疗应用的可靠性和安全性要求，设计和开发跨异构无线网络数据采集协调、电磁干扰控制、医疗设备配置和优化运行的技术。iii)由于对医疗设备、网络和电子健康记录的可信认证对保护患者至关重要？在安全性和隐私性方面，我们设计了基于患者特定医疗环境的访问控制算法。iv)为了在不同环境下将不同的控制方案集成到一个一致的系统中，我们设计了控制分析算法和工具来静态和动态地识别隐藏的策略冲突。v)创建参考无线医疗传感器和设备测试平台，并将其部署到各种环境下的真实场景中。

With the increasing reliability and pervasiveness of wireless networks, more and more critical systems such as vehicular networks, military systems, and first responder systems, rely on wireless networks. In modern hospitals, wireless technology will be used to interconnect medical, sensing, and computing devices, as well as the electronic health record system to enable smart medical applications, such as real-time patient monitoring, which can significantly improve quality of care. Researchers have accumulated abundant knowledge for designing network solutions for critical systems, however, most of them isolate the network designs from application context: very limited context of the application circumstances, e.g. location and user identity, is considered. Differently, in medical applications for connected hospitals, the network and security functionalities of medical systems are often tightly coupled with the medical context, such as patient's physiological state and caregiver's workflow. As much of those context information becomes available in real-time via connected medical devices and sensors, this project addresses this urgent challenge to investigate and integrate context into network control under safety requirements. If successful, the research results shall reduce hazards and deployment cost of wired networks in hospitals, and facilitate real-time and efficient information exchange among patients, doctors, and clinical support systems.This work establishes fundamental network models that incorporate context information, and provides networking solutions for different medical applications under their safety and reliability requirements. Specifically, the intellectual contributions of this proposed work are: i) networked medical devices, sensors, electronic health record, and clinical decision support systems provide real-time and rich contextual information about the patients and the medical procedures. We investigate the relation between the medical context and the medical systems network and security functionalities, and create context based network and security control models. ii) Under the reliability and safety requirements of medical applications, we design and develop technologies to coordinate data collection across heterogeneous wireless networks, control electromagnetic interference, configure and optimize operations of medical devices. iii) Since trustworthy authentication to medical devices, networks, and electronic health record is vital to protect patient?s safety and privacy, we design access control algorithms based on patient specific medical context. iv) To integrate different control solutions into a consistent system in various contexts, we design control analysis algorithms and tools to identify hidden policy conflicts statically and dynamically. v) A reference wireless medical sensor and device testbed is created and deployed into real scenarios under a variety of contexts.