Testing Safety-Critical Systems - A Reuse-Oriented Approach

This paper discusses the testing of a safety-critical medical device in an industrial environment. The authors have worked on the development and testing of a cardiac rhythm management system at Guidant Corporation, which is involved in the development of a family of related medical devices. The testing process of these systems is expensive because of the stringent safety and reliability requirement of these devices. To leverage the cost involved in the testing process we take advantage of the overlap in functionality across a family of products. In this paper, we present a domain-specific reuse approach we used in testing these safety-critical software systems. The approach allows easy generation of test artifacts, like test scenarios and test cases, while maximizing reusability. We have demonstrated our technique in the testing of a cardiac pacemaker and have achieved significant improvements in productivity.