YOAPY: A data aggregation and pre-processing module for enabling continuous healthcare monitoring in the internet of things

Abstract

Wireless transmissions of continuous vital signs are gaining importance for providing rich patient-care data in ambient assisted living environments, these monitoring systems are moving towards the Internet of Things, which offers a global and end-to-end connectivity with technologies such as 6LoWPAN. This work analyzes the requirements to transmit the continuous vital sign from an electrocardiogram to a remote server. Specifically, this presents the impact from the security in the performance, in issues such as overload, latency, and power consumption i.e. patient monitoring system lifetime, for different cryptographic primitives. For that reason, a pre-processing module is also proposed, denominated YOAPY, to reach a trade-off among the requirements from the continuous vital signs data transmission, security/privacy level, and lifetime. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.