Presentation

The increase in the scientific research and the improvement in the technological capacity of the industrial sectors in all the countries —in particular, the developing countries— is a fundamental purpose of the sustainable development goals projected towards 2030 by the United Nations. These goals were the main focusof the Workshop of Information and Communication Technologies for Sustainable Development, carried out within the Innovation, Science, and Technology Convention; a biannual event held in the Havana Conventions Palace (Cuba) since 2016. The best research works of the second edition of this workshop were selected to be published in two numbers of the Sistemas & Telemática scientific magazine.

For this reason, this second number is dedicated to two of the sustainable development goals towards 2030: Objective 3, Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages; and objective 11, Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Aging of the world population is a phenomenon leading a growing trend in many countries and it entailsthe necessity to address and execute policies focused on primary attention for senior citizens. Three articles of this edition (the first, fourth, and the last) are related with this phenomenon and, somehow, related with objective 3. The remaining articles are lined up with objective 11.

Pulse oximeters, the topic addressed in the first article, are fundamental to advance towards non-present health monitoring devices, either interacting with smartphones or with devices connected to the Internet. In their proposal, the authors present the prototype of a pulse oximeter based on the ESP8266 microcontroller –equipped with Wi-Fi connection–, which allows long distance monitoring of two fundamental variables in individuals during their daily activities: Oxygen saturation and heart rate.

The second article within this edition is related with the fog computing, an emerging technology complementing the cloud computing paradigm which seeks to reduce the latency and unnecessary data traffic sent to the Internet. This is done by improving the usage of the distributed resources geographically closer to the source. The authors present the main features and advantages of this technology and its potential to achieve smarter and more sustainable cities; they also propose a roadmap to implement a recommendation system forsightseeing places based in the fog computing and useful for tourists.

The implementation of an on-board diagnostics system based on the OBD-II over CAN bus diagnostics protocol is the main topic of the third article. The objective of the proposal is to visualize in real-time some variables, allowing to diagnose the status of the vehicles relative to the operation codes, potential failures, and performance of the electrical system.

The edition continues with the results presentation of a project consisting on the design and implementation of a system, capable to provide a speedy way to request help via the cellular network; this is especially useful for senior citizens. The system has Arduino boards, GSM cards, moisture and temperature sensors, flame and magnetic sensors for doors and windows. Making people more intelligent and resilient in cities more and more smarter is a large indirect benefit of this research.

The edition finalizes with an article started from a review of the current context, characterized by a larger life expectancy of the world population, an increase in the number of patients with chronical diseases and lack of financial resources. The authors propose changes in the current paradigms of the sanitary attention by considering –among others– the therapeutic innovations in the clinical part, the development of the personalized and regenerative medicine, the large technological changes and innovations, and the cultural changes. Their approach points towards a more efficient, effective, and sustainable model.