This paper presents a novel system based on the Internet of Things (IoT) to Human Activity Recognition (HAR) by monitoring vital signs remotely. We use machine learning algorithms to determine the activity done within four pre-established categories (lie, sit, walk and jog). Meanwhile, it is able to give feedback during and after the activity is performed, using a remote monitoring component with remote visualization and programmable alarms. This system was successfully implemented with a 95.83% success ratio.

El internet de las cosas, también conocido como IoT por sus siglas en inglés (Internet of Things), es un nuevo paradigma tecnológico que permite la interconexión de objetos (las cosas), servicios y/o personas por medio de internet. IoT introduce nuevas herramientas que enriquecen el trabajo en diferentes sectores industriales. Este artículo presenta un estudio del trabajo desarrollado en todo el mundo en tecnologías con base en el concepto de IoT en el marco de la industria del cuidado de la salud, incluyendo métodos, estadísticas y casos de éxito. En la última sección, se discute sobre el trabajo realizado en este ámbito en el contexto colombiano, incluyendo aplicaciones exitosas y proyectos que se encuentran en desarrollo.

Physiological signals are strongly related to a person’s state of health and carry information about the human body. For example, by ECG, it is possible to obtain information about cardiac disease, emotions, personal identification, and the sex of a person, among others. This paper proposes the study of the heartbeat from a soft-biometric perspective to be applied to smartphone unlocking services. We employ the user heartbeat to classify the individual by sex (male, female) with the use of Deep Learning, reaching an accuracy of 94.4% ± 2.0%. This result was obtained with the RGB representation of the union of the time-frequency transformation from the pseudo-orthogonal X, Y, and Z bipolar signals. Evaluating each bipolar contribution, we found that the XYZ combination provides the best category distinction using GoogLeNet. The 24-h Holter database of the study contains 202 subjects with a female size of 49.5%. We propose an architecture for managing this signal that allows the use of a few samples to train the network. Due to the hidden nature of ECG, it does not present vulnerabilities like public trait exposition, light/noise sensibility, or learnability compared to fingerprint, facial, voice, or password verification methods. ECG may complement those gaps en route to a cooperative authentication ecosystem.

Human sex recognition with electrocardiogram signals is an emerging area in machine learning, mostly oriented toward neural network approaches. It might be the beginning of a field of heart behavior analysis focused on sex. However, a person’s heartbeat changes during daily activities, which could compromise the classification. In this paper, with the intention of capturing heartbeat dynamics, we divided the heart rate into different intervals, creating a specialized identification model for each interval. The sexual differentiation for each model was performed with a deep convolutional neural network from images that represented the RGB wavelet transformation of ECG pseudo-orthogonal X, Y, and Z signals, using sufficient samples to train the network. Our database included 202 people, with a female-to-male population ratio of 49.5–50.5% and an observation period of 24 h per person. As our main goal, we looked for periods of time during which the classification rate of sex recognition was higher and the process was faster; in fact, we identified intervals in which only one heartbeat was required. We found that for each heart rate interval, the best accuracy score varied depending on the number of heartbeats collected. Furthermore, our findings indicated that as the heart rate increased, fewer heartbeats were needed for analysis. On average, our proposed model reached an accuracy of 94.82% ± 1.96%. The findings of this investigation provide a heartbeat acquisition procedure for ECG sex recognition systems. In addition, our results encourage future research to include sex as a soft biometric characteristic in person identification scenarios and for cardiology studies, in which the detection of specific male or female anomalies could help autonomous learning machines move toward specialized health applications.

Background: Human user authentication can be implemented by token-, keyword-, or identity-based mechanisms for digital environment session entry (i.e., smartphones, platforms with log-in). Physiological signals, such as ECG, have shown discriminative properties for user identity recognition. Due to ECG hidden nature, it is resilient to public trait exposition, light/noise saturation, or eavesdropping in contrast to fingerprint, facial, voice, or password approaches. ECG might fill those gaps toward a cooperative authentication environment. Methods: This paper proposes a Deep Learning identification scenario in which the inclusion of sex recognition directs the input sample toward a sex-specialized identity classification model, simplifying the discrimination space for each model. The architecture proposed could be suitable for large populations. Our scheme worked with an ECG three-axis pseudo-orthogonal configuration in which each axis is transformed into a time-frequency space. Additionally, we combine each lead matrix in an RGB image, joining the contribution of each wavelet waveform. Results: Our results suggest that it is possible to identify people by using RGB wavelet representations, achieving a classification average of 99.97%. In addition, the inclusion of the sex category for our identification purpose does not significantly affect the classification performance, making it a feasible solution for systems with a larger population. Conclusions: With the features of our database, we have evidence that it is possible to recognize a person’s identity using an ECG sex recognition module through our proposed architecture.