Formal Methods for the Informal Engineer: Workshop Recommendations

TL;DR

The paper discusses a workshop that explores integrating formal methods into biomedical software development to enhance safety and reliability in life sciences and medicine.

Contribution

It provides five concrete recommendations for software leaders to incorporate formal methods into biomedical software projects.

Findings

Five concrete recommendations for integrating formal methods

Emphasis on formal methods in safety-critical biomedical software

Workshop insights on future role of formal methods in biomedicine

Abstract

Formal Methods for the Informal Engineer (FMIE) was a workshop held at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2021 to explore the potential role of verified software in the biomedical software ecosystem. The motivation for organizing FMIE was the recognition that the life sciences and medicine are undergoing a transition from being passive consumers of software and AI/ML technologies to fundamental drivers of new platforms, including those which will need to be mission and safety-critical. Drawing on conversations leading up to and during the workshop, we make five concrete recommendations to help software leaders organically incorporate tools, techniques, and perspectives from formal methods into their project planning and development trajectories.