DOI: 10.18154/rwth-2023-00139
title: ASMO: a decentralized and verifiable interoperability platform in intensive care; 2.1

description: Aachen (2023). doi:10.18154/RWTH-2023-00139
description: This publication contains the printed circuit board (PCB) layout files for a decentralized and verifiable interoperability platform in intensive care. The files are stored in the format of Autodesk EAGLE Version 9. Most of the other PCB layout design software is also able to read this format. (However, the format is XML-based, which makes it on a basic text level interpretable). There are two files. The .sch file gives the schematic, which is the description of the interconnection of the different parts of the circuit. Here the focus lies on readability. The second file (namely the .brd file) is one concrete implementation of the given schematic. On the one hand this board file can be used to rebuild the presented interoperability platform but on the other it can also be used to adopt the platform to their very specific needs. <br> This platform is motivated by the need for interconnected medical devices, which enable new therapies and automate existing ones. Following this approach, we can identify two challenges: Interoperability and Verifiability. Due to various manufacturers and interfaces, interoperability is often not directly possible but needs to be enabled with the help of auxiliary hardware. Addressing the demand for safety of the interconnected medical application, verifiability is essential and depends, among other aspects, on the complexity of the system, which is increasing with the dimension of interconnected devices. However, many of the state-of-the-art medical hardware platforms neglect this need for verifiability. They often rely on a centralized unit, running a Linux operating system containing e.g., closed source libraries. Therefore, in this publication we present the ASMO hardware platform, which provides various interfaces to enable interoperability. The abbreviation ASMO is based on the Greek expression for safe translation (άσϕαλής μετασχηματίζω). Additionally, in the architecture using the proposed hardware, the workload is distributed such that the complexity of each unit can be reduced, which is beneficial for the verification of the used algorithms, without reducing the overall processing capabilities. Each ASMO board is based on a STM32F767ZI microcontroller, which offers enough computational power to perform embedded machine learning. By running a low-level real-time operating system, the verifiability can be further preserved, and abstraction layers are available to easily upgrade the interconnected medical setup if a device needs to be introduced. Thanks to the modular design of the ASMO board and the publicly available layout, it can even be adapted to meet new requirements like custom protocols or interfaces. <br> The presented platform was initially developed in the context of the dissertation of André Stollenwerk. This first version was using an Atmel AT91SAM7 microcontroller. Being inspired by an evaluation-board for this microcontroller, which was used in the first experiments, a platform suitable for agile biomedical applications was developed. The use-case was the automated control of an ECMO in conjunction with the mechanical ventilation. This version 1 of the board exclusively offered CAN as communication interface to interconnect the different nodes of the resulting setup. Until 2020 the existing platform was used in three additional projects. In 2020 it was ported to the STM32F767ZI microcontroller as version 2 of the design. The porting to the STM microcontroller, among other things, introduced ethernet as an additional communication interface for interconnection. Ongoing from Version 2 in the presented Version 2.1 some minor design issues were addressed.
description: Published by Aachen