SBIR/STTR Research Award
Medical Device Verification Using Model-Based Testing
Award amount
$1,493,560Program and phase
SBIR · Phase II – Direct to Phase IIAward year
2022Award details
- Awarding agency
- Department of Defense
- Branch
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Recipient company
- Lalaith Astor Technical Consulting House, LLC
- Proposal award date
- 2021-12-20
- Contract end date
- 2024-03-18
- UEI
- SLNWNL1AZYB7
- Solicitation number
- HR001121S0007.I
- Topic code
- HR001121S0007-08
Research abstract
High-risk, cyber-physical systems are open to potential anomalies, vulnerabilities, and defects that can have a significant impact on the warfighter from the perspective of security, functionality, and operational capabilities. While security and safety-critical physical devices must undergo regulatory approval, quality management system (QMS) frameworks and a reliance on manufacturer testing are insufficient to mitigate the inherent risks. In the medical domain, medical device recalls have seen a rise from 409.5 million units (2016-2017) to 595.98 million units (2018-2019. Five years ago, recalls were due to device design issues and product control; today, recalls are largely due to software anomalies, false results, and network connection issues. While medical innovation drives neededĀenhancements, the degradation in quality is a result of architecture-level redesigns and the failure of testing to verify that the device continues to meet its quality goals. FDAÆs recall database shows that more than ten percent of Class III medical deviceĀrecalls are the result of software failures in firmware. Ensuring safety, security, and viability requires a rigorous, effective, and independent verification solution. The QMS framework relies on manufacturers to meet quality requirements and does not guarantee verification of identified device states or offer independent verification outside of a review of manufacturer-provided output. Third parties will benefit from a methodology and tool set that supports the identification of anomalies and vulnerabilities.Ā We propose to use rigorous development and analysis technologies to enable faster and more accurate identification of software and firmware vulnerabilities and defects in physical devices and to provide direct evidence that the device implements its system, design, and user requirements. Our goal is to formalize an efficient and comprehensive Model Based Testing (MBT) methodology, abstract model, and tool setsĀusing lightweight formal methods that can be commercialized for Government or third-party customers to test and validate resource limited, embedded systems in a small number of days. A secondary goal is to provide our product to manufacturers to enhance verification of their high-risk devices. In previous research, we showed that it is feasible to construct a reference model and an assurance case using the models and analysis artifacts. The remaining challenge is to connect reference modeling techniques with modern software analysis and model extraction techniques, which allows test groups to automate and streamline the collection of evidence and accelerate the approval process. We will create an abstract formal model of a generic AED and then map the abstract model to a low-level model of a vendorÆs AED firmware.ĀWith MBT, the invariants from the abstract model will be verified to ensure that the vendorÆs implementation conforms to the safety and security invariants claimed in the abstract model.
Technology keywords
Not reported
Awards with the same topic code
Verified by an exact topic code match. This is not a text-similarity match.
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