The technological advancements in the field of remote sensing have resulted in substantial
growth of the telemedicine industry. While health care practitioners may now monitor their
patients’ well-being from a distance and deliver their services remotely, the lack of physical
presence introduces security risks, primarily with regard to the identity of the involved parties.
The sensing apparatus, that a patient may employ at home, collects and transmits vital signals
to medical centres which respond with treatment decisions despite the lack of solid authentication
of the transmitter’s identity. In essence, remote monitoring increases the risks of identity fraud in
health care. This paper proposes a biometric identification solution suitable for continuous monitoring
environments. The system uses the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal in order to extract unique
characteristics which allow to discriminate users. In security, ECG falls under the category of
medical biometrics, a relatively young but promising field of biometric security solutions. In this
work, the authors investigate the idiosyncratic properties of home telemonitoring that may affect
the ECG signal and compromise security. The effects of psychological changes on the ECG
waveform are taken into consideration for the design of a robust biometric system that can identify
users based on cardiac signals despite physical or emotional variations