Body Area Networks (BANs) are only recently beginning to revolutionize e-healthcare by making monitoring of various patients accessible and convenient for physicians and patients. Past research in BANs has focused on biosensor design, signal processing, power efficiency, and wireless protocols. However, numerous challenges plague its development and implementation to this day. One of these is the dependability --a conjunction of reliability, security and availability --from both an intra-BAN and extra-BAN communications perspective. Using a generic, divided system model (intra-BAN and extra-BAN), we identify potential areas of failure. The paper discusses and classifies issues and schemes proposed to increase dependability. Finally, upcoming challenges and new directions of research for improving the dependability of BANs are presented.

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