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The paper introduces the problem of designing a medical cyber-physical system (MCPS) for telecare of pregnant women at home. Design challenges and requirements have been shortly explained, as well as the innovative elements of the underlined holistic design methodology and the architecture. The system consists of the Body Area Network (BAN) of advanced sensors that are interconnected on a body of a pregnant woman, the Personal Area Network (PAN) that is responsible for embedded processing of physical signals, smart alarms, and a transmission channel to the Central Surveillance Centre located in a hospital. It is expected that dependable telemedical systems will provide a high societal value to high-risk pregnant women, especially those in dispersed rural areas.

The Medical Cyber-Physical System (MCPS) for telemonitoring of pregnant women at home is introduced in the paper. The system comprises the Body Area Network (BAN) of advanced sensors that are interconnected on a body of a pregnant woman and the Personal Area Network (PAN) which is responsible for embedded processing of physical signals, smart alerts, and human-machine-interface. A reliable transmission channel assures communication with the Central Surveillance Centre located in a hospital. The paper focuses on the problem of biosignals acquisition and measurement that is solved using the smart selection of algorithms for abdominal signal analysis in the mobile instrumentation of PAN.

The paper presents a visual knowledge-based approach for designing collaborative networks of engineering design organizations. The novelty of this holistic approach lies in integrated modelling of business, engineering, and learning processes. Distributed design tasks are easier coordinated due to explicit representation of management procedures as visual knowledge models of design flows and workflows. Furthermore, these visual models enable definition of design task patterns that can support design innovation management and learning across distributed teams. Proliferation of this approach in engineering communities is conditioned by availability of appropriate open platforms enabling distributed collaborative design and continuous learning processes in a frame of a collaborative engineering network.

A methodology, an application scenario and a new system enabling collaborative distributed design have been presented. The system based on Tool Registration and Management Services (TRMS) constitutes the core of the engineering collaborative infrastructure that has been deployed in the distributed design of intellectual property (IP) components. The system assures information security (including user authorization, data and transfer encrypting), communication through firewalls, remote administration of users and tools, and some support for distributed inter-organization workflows.

The paper presents a collaboration platform with model-based configurable services. It is a part of a more general approach developed by the EU project MAPPER that enables distributed collaboration over adaptive knowledge-intensive engineering processes. In a model-configured infrastructure, active knowledge models (AKMs) of products and processes become the basis for user-composed services, tools and methodologies available to users in customisable workplaces. A multi-layered architecture that offers a powerful means for configuration of services for particular application areas has been described. The presented approach and the collaboration platform have been experimented with in a collaborative engineering use case in electronic industry that integrated two dispersed SMEs. Experiences learned are summarized.

• Collaborative engineering for distributed product development • Challenges in collaborative design• MAPPER project objectives and approach• MAPPER collaborative infrastructure• Requirements for distributed tool integration• TRMS - Tool Registration and Management Services• New TRMS architecture• Deployment of TRMS• Conclusions

This chapter identifies different types of virtual organizations that are emerging in the electronics sector. Examples of VOs are introduced that represent different forms of network-based functionality. A vision on electronic engineering VOs based on new ICT infrastructures developed within European R&D projects is shortly depicted. It is believed that new technologies of engineering collaboration supported by these infrastructures will enable new concurrent engineering design methodologies, adequate for complexities of currently designed Systems-on-Chip.

This chapter addresses security framework in virtual organisations. It identifies essential sources of threats to VOs security and presents technologies such as: confidentiality and integrity of data for secure communication, authentication, authorisation and access control to resources, to assure this security. The need for appropriate management of security measures deployed in a particular VO has been stressed. Security instruments developed and demonstrated by the IST projects E-COLLEG, EXTERNAL, PRODNET, and TeleCAREe follow. Finally, open R&D questions, related to VOs security framework, are addressed.