Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) - A systems of systems engineering characterization

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is a vital lifesaving therapy. Though it has achieved approximately 75% survival rates for patients starting with less than a 25% chance of survival, ECMO was not designed and implemented in a rigorous engineering process. This paper will introduce a Systems of Systems (SoS) Engineering approach to characterizing the ECMO architecture and formally documenting it using Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), developed in a partnership between Children´s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) and the Georgia Institute of Technology´s Professional Masters of Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE) program. Finally, the authors will describe possible areas of future work that may be undertaken as projects for future PMASE cohorts or others. The primary and unique contribution of this work is an initial application of formal MBSE to one of the most complex medical system of systems.