Biometry

Biometry is becoming more and more widespread for at least a couple of reason

Wellbeing

Even smart watches and phones do not invasively measure a bunch of our vital parameters, in order to monitor what happens in our daily life; this is a help for our health, but on the other hand a potential threat to our privacy.

Safety

Elderly alone at home may risk falling and undetected sleep apneas. Within the framework of EU Innovation 4 Welfare we developed Robo MD, following the person like a pet, measuring in Bluetooth telemetry Electrocardiograms and the 3 spatial accelerations, thus detecting falls and apneas [1] (also thanks to the so called respiratory arrhythmia), interviewing the cared and interpreting answers (or their absence) through a simple Artificial Intelligence onboard, then deciding if necessary to call the remote control where a skilled human being - on duty supervising over several devices - could decide what to do, even interacting with the subject through the robot sensors and actuators.

Security

Nowadays our smartphone password is our fingerprint; keys to our offices and homes are more and more often our eyes. In general, cybersecurity is more effective if at least a portion of the system is bio-statistically related to our body, not just statically but even dynamically: Hearth Rate Variability is a kind of lie detector, reading sympathetic activation as Low Frequency in the HRV Spectrum of the potential intruder when stressed [2]. As for every technology, thus, a lot of pros and fewer potential cons, and it is our business to mitigate, domesticating them.

1. D Liberati (2009) Biomedical applications of piece-wise affine idnentification for hybrid systems. Ann Biomed Eng 37(9): 1871-1876.
2. M Pagani, G Mazzuero, A Ferrari, D Liberati, S Cerutti, et al. (1991) Sympathovagal interaction during mental stress. A study using spectral analysis of heart rate variability in healthy control subjects and patients with a prior myocardial infarction. Circulation 83(4 Suppl): II43-II51.