Health Projects at the IoT Congress 2023

From 31 January to 2 February, Fira de Barcelona hosted the IOT Solutions World Congress 2023, an international meeting place for all parties involved in the Internet of Things (IoT). This year’s main topic was the transformative power of disruptive technologies such as the IoT, Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Twin, 5G, augmented reality and edge computing.

IoT refers to the interconnection of objects through telecommunication networks, as explained by the Digital Catalonia Alliance’s IoT Working Group on its website. More than 330 exhibitors from around the world took part in the congress to present their IoT solutions in different areas such as industry, mobility, sustainability and security.

In the field of health, certain initiatives and organisations such as Maxsens were presented. The latter is an IoT solution that can give recommendations for posture correction and prevent possible health risks to the hand or wrist. The solution uses Artificial Intelligence and a combination of 10 types of sensors that capture hand and wrist biometrics, including neural signals and real-time data collection via Wi-Fi/4G.

Another exhibitor in the health field was the Computer Vision Center (CVC), a research centre focused on computer vision, which provides prediction models and clinical decision-making tools using medical imaging.

DCA-IoT annual conference

The congress included the annual conference of the Digital Catalonia Alliance-IoT (DCA-IoT), which reviewed its activities in 2022 and addressed the challenges of adopting the IoT from the perspective of technological demand. The session was attended by Carme Pratdepadua, the head of mHealth at the TIC Salut Social Foundation. She presented several of the foundation’s 2022 milestones in this area, such as the evaluation of 10 apps and solutions from more than 14 different providers in the field of diabetes, the start of the European project Label2enable and the Vic-iDays Hackathon to democratise hearing health.

Pratdepadua highlighted the fact that the TIC Salut Social Foundation joined the work meetings of the DCA-IoT steering group in November 2022 and stressed the challenges that will be faced together with this group in 2023, such as cybersecurity, which is one of the critical points of the IoT.  

The DCA-IoT brings together more than 200 companies, research centres, administrations and other organisations that develop, integrate, implement or offer technological solutions based on IoT technology. According to the DCA-IoT, turnover in this sector amounts to more than €200 million in Catalonia, mainly among small and medium-sized companies.