Open Electronics for Medical Devices: State-of-Art and Unique Advantages

An Overview of Medical Electronic Hardware Security and Emerging Solutions

Electronic healthcare technology is widespread around the world and creates massive potential to improve clinical outcomes and transform care delivery. However, there are increasing concerns with respect to the cyber vulnerabilities of medical tools, malicious medical errors, and security attacks on healthcare data and devices. Increased connectivity to existing computer networks has exposed the medical devices/systems and their communicating data to new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Adversaries leverage the state-of-the-art technologies, in particular artificial intelligence and computer vision-based techniques, in order to launch stronger and more detrimental attacks on the medical targets. The medical domain is an attractive area for cybercrimes for two fundamental reasons: (a) it is rich resource of valuable and sensitive data; and (b) its protection and defensive mechanisms are weak and ineffective. The attacks aim to steal health information from the patients, manipulate the medical information and queries, maliciously change the medical diagnosis, decisions, and prescriptions, etc. A successful attack in the medical domain causes serious damage to the patient’s health and even death. Therefore, cybersecurity is critical to patient safety and every aspect of the medical domain, while it has not been studied sufficiently. To tackle this problem, new human- and computer-based countermeasures are researched and proposed for medical attacks using the most effective software and hardware technologies, such as artificial intelligence and computer vision. This review provides insights to the novel and existing solutions in the literature that mitigate cyber risks, errors, damage, and threats in the medical domain. We have performed a scoping review analyzing the four major elements in this area (in order from a medical perspective): (1) medical errors; (2) security weaknesses of medical devices at software- and hardware-level; (3) artificial intelligence and/or computer vision in medical applications; and (4) cyber attacks and defenses in the medical domain. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and computer vision are key topics in this review and their usage in all these four elements are discussed. The review outcome delivers the solutions through building and evaluating the connections among these elements in order to serve as a beneficial guideline for medical electronic hardware security.

Analysis of Single Board Architectures Integrating Sensors Technologies

Development boards, Single-Board Computers (SBCs) and Single-Board Microcontrollers (SBMs) integrating sensors and communication technologies have become a very popular and interesting solution in the last decade. They are of interest for their simplicity, versatility, adaptability, ease of use and prototyping, which allow them to serve as a starting point for projects and as reference for all kinds of designs. In this sense, there are innumerable applications integrating sensors and communication technologies where they are increasingly used, including robotics, domotics, testing and measurement, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) projects, Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the home or workplace and science, technology, engineering, educational and also academic world for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills. The interest in single-board architectures and their applications have caused that all electronics manufacturers currently develop low-cost single board platform solutions. In this paper we realized an analysis of the most important topics related with single-board architectures integrating sensors. We analyze the most popular platforms based on characteristics as: cost, processing capacity, integrated processing technology and open-source license, as well as power consumption (mA@V), reliability (%), programming flexibility, support availability and electronics utilities. For evaluation, an experimental framework has been designed and implemented with six sensors (temperature, humidity, CO₂/TVOC, pressure, ambient light and CO) and different data storage and monitoring options: locally on a μSD (Micro Secure Digital), on a Cloud Server, on a Web Server or on a Mobile Application.

Low-cost and open-source strategies for chemical separations

In recent years, a trend toward utilizing open access resources for laboratory research has begun. Open-source design strategies for scientific hardware rely upon the use of widely available parts, especially those that can be directly printed using additive manufacturing techniques and electronic components that can be connected to low-cost microcontrollers. Open-source software eliminates the need for expensive commercial licenses and provides the opportunity to design programs for specific needs. In this review, the impact of the "open-source movement" within the field of chemical separations is described, primarily through a comprehensive look at research in this area over the past five years. Topics that are covered include general laboratory equipment, sample preparation techniques, separations-based analysis, detection strategies, electronic system control, and software for data processing. Remaining hurdles and possible opportunities for further adoption of open-source approaches in the context of these separations-related topics are also discussed.