Automated Computation of Therapies Using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis in the Medical Domain

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework that automates the derivation of optimal therapies in the medical domain by transforming FMEA models into Markov decision processes, enabling automatic planning and action.

Contribution

It presents a novel formalization of FMEA as a Markov decision process to automate therapy computation, reducing reliance on manual expert analysis.

Findings

Successfully models FMEA as MDP for automation

Enables automatic derivation of optimal therapies

Supports medical decision-making processes

Abstract

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a systematic approach to identify and analyse potential failures and their effects in a system or process. The FMEA approach, however, requires domain experts to manually analyse the FMEA model to derive risk-reducing actions that should be applied. In this paper, we provide a formal framework to allow for automatic planning and acting in FMEA models. More specifically, we cast the FMEA model into a Markov decision process which can then be solved by existing solvers. We show that the FMEA approach can not only be used to support medical experts during the modelling process but also to automatically derive optimal therapies for the treatment of patients.