MRI: Development of High-Confidence Medical Cyber-Physical System Research Instrument with Benchmark Security Software

Medical cyber-physical systems (MCPS) require high reliability and security because they are safety critical. The lack of test benchmarks, suitable hardware-software interfaces, and easy-to-test hardware platforms makes it challenging to evaluate, verify, and validate the security mechanisms and reliability of high-confidence MCPS (HC-MCPS). This project aims to develop a configurable, extendable, opensource, reliable, human-in-the-loop HC-MCPS testbed.

The HC-MCPS testbed will advance the ability to simulate attack/defense models. It will provide a simulation platform for cyber-physical attacks, artificial intelligence (AI) attacks, control instability detectors, and allow the researchers to conduct multidisciplinary research.

The instrument will enable researchers to make medical cyber-physical systems more reliable and secure, ultimately improving the quality of healthcare. It will contribute to research, training, and teaching at the home institution in an EPSCoR state by enabling a large number of federally and state-funded projects in the areas of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotic Telesurgery, and Nursing.

The instrument will also be used outside of the home institution to support cyber-enabled collaborative operations and data sharing among over twenty collaborators.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.