Dealing with nowadays complex systems is very difficult. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) have become pervasive in many domains, such as the eHealth, and they are even more critical as they need to cope with software (in some sense something people are used to) and with hardware (typically geographically distributed, among different domains). Future systems will always be a combination of physical and cyber parts, and thus it is mandatory to know how to deal will them and, in particular, to consider the IoT devices as full-fledged resources to play with, as we usually do with computing, storage and networking. 

The SoSmartCPS summer school will introduce the participants to the CPS, with a focus on Digital Health domain, and then will explain how to deal with such systems, where there is no distinction among the different parts: computing, storage, networking and Internet of Things (IoT) all contribute to setting up the modern processing environments and for this reason it is mandatory to keep them simultaneously under control.

In detail, the school intends to offer a comprehensive approach to design, implement and use CPSs, i.e., computing systems with a strong interaction between the physical environment (equipped with sensors and actuators) and the cyber part (the Fog and Cloud in a wide sense), with case studies related to the Digital Health domain. Sensors, boards, edge devices, computing, storage, networking resources are seen as elements of a whole picture where everything can be virtualized and composed to create the infrastructure on top of which services and applications can be deployed. Infrastructure continuum represents our environment, where we can move from edge computing (by exploiting remote resources) to the Cloud, going through Fog resources to set up the entire framework for services deployment.

This summer school proposes a new approach to the design, programming and use of CPSs by considering them as complex “systems of systems” that need a specific methodology for their design and management. Better to say, all current systems are seen as CPS by nature and for this reason the interaction among the physical and the cyber parts must be managed since the very first phases of their design. The IoT dimension is part of the overall infrastructure and IoT resources have to be considered since the very beginning and kept at the same level of consideration of other more traditional resources such as computing, storage and networking. The school will teach how to design a network architecture with all the virtualized resources in place, how to optimise their interaction and keep everything under the full control of the system manager.

As mentioned above, this year the Summer School will focus on Digital Health Cyber-Physical Systems, exploring how digital and physical components seamlessly interact to transform healthcare delivery. Participants will learn how CPS methodologies enable remote monitoring, smart medical devices, and intelligent clinical infrastructures. The program will address real-world challenges such as reliability, data integration, interoperability, and patient-centred system design. Through lectures and hands-on sessions, students will gain practical skills directly applicable to next-generation healthcare CPS-based solutions. Join us to be part of the digital transformation shaping the future of healthcare.

The school is supported by the EU-cofunded project DS4Health – Digital skills for Healthcare Transformation, DIGITAL-2021-SKILLS-01-SPECIALISED, Grant no. 101083563 (https://www.digitalskills4health.eu), an International Master’s program whose goal is to provide higher education for healthcare professionals in digital skills and deepen insight in design, use, and development of digital technologies to form a modern, ethically responsible, efficient and citizen-centred healthcare. The courses and seminars of the summer schools will be also made available to the students of the international masters of DS4Health.