The digitalization of healthcare implies that the delivery of medical services is increasingly reliant on autonomous and connected software systems, e.g. autonomous robotics and cloud-based telemonitoring via smart wearables [1]. Modern healthcare requires these systems to interact harmoniously to improve patient care [2], e.g. to proactively retrieve information to reduce time to treatment.

Given these developments, it is critical to ensure that emergent behavior, i.e., behavior caused by the interactions between systems rather than by the systems themselves [3], remains conducive to the overall quality goals of the systems. For complex systems, the analysis requires that these systems be conceptualized as SoSs (System-of-Systems) [4].

In the Laboratory for Software Quality, we are building an environment that enables us to systematically develop and analyze such SoSs in healthcare. We consider core healthcare systems, such as a Hospital Information System (HIS), a Hospital Logistics System (HLS) with integrated robotics support and a Sepsis Monitoring System (SMS) as a kind of Patient Monitoring System (PMS) that facilitates patient monitoring for timely detection of sepsis. We support their independent development, deployment and interaction through cloud-native technologies. As SoSs in healthcare are safety-critical, it is crucial that not only the individual systems, but in particular the corresponding system interactions are systematically developed. In addition, the emergent behavior captured in these interactions must be systematically analyzed and understood.