## 1 Introduction  
Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a virus discovered in 2019 [1], one of the fundamental concerns was the elderly population, namely due to the impact that the disease caused by the new coronavirus could have on the population in this age group (65 years old or more) [2]. Until then, several solutions for the surveillance of the elderly in a residential context had been advanced by the electronic industry, information technology and entities related to the protection of property and the security of people, allied to well-being and home automation [3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8]. However, the reality, in the current context, shows us that the proliferation of proposals in computer and telecommunications systems for monitoring and supporting the elderly population falls far short of what is desired. The ageing population, living in remote regions, has been exposed to the cruelest conditions of abandonment, without access to medicines, without means of communication, exacerbated by the fact that, in many areas of Portugal, there is no mobile network coverage or, if there is, it has a deficient signal. For these citizens, everything became more distant. Thus, based on this reality as a motivation for the present work, the following question arose: how can the health status and living conditions of the elderly population, dispersed in rural areas with low or no mobile network coverage at all, be remotely monitored using low-cost technologies? To answer that question, several situations need to be considered. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), currently present in several home systems, notably in small devices for regular use, such as a blood pressure meter, but also in larger equipment, including photovoltaic panels, household appliances, consumption and energy efficiency controllers, among others [9], has extended the application spectrum of data communication networks to other sectors. The health and well-being area is also one of the areas that has benefited the most from this type of technology [10], which is why its exploitation and use in the current context of the pandemic for the benefit of the most disadvantaged populations, in particular the elderly population living in rural areas, becomes imperative. With the technology currently available, it is possible to combine devices with heterogeneous systems, such as smartphones with mobile networks (3G/4G and, in the future, 5G), Bluetooth devices, wireless networks, sensors, among others, allowing these devices to interact with one another and provide fully automated, adaptive operating environments, taking advantage of these infrastructures and being able to contribute to the improvement of people's quality of life. In [11; 12], the authors present some models for the use of low-consumption and long-range networks for home and industry automation, respectively, using Long-Range (LoRa) communication technologies. These communication networks are essential to disseminate data and for its analysis, without necessarily resorting to the Internet, as they are able to collect data from various sensors, maintaining their activity for a long period of time, since the consumption of devices and sensors is reduced. The communication of these data uses a LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) gateway, which can be up to 15 km away from the LoRa node that sends the data to the respective Internet connection device [13]. The emergence and expansion of smart cities is an excellent example of the use of the Internet of Things and the use of Artificial Intelligence, in which ubiquitous computing systems are collecting and generating huge amounts of data daily that not require only a storage location, using Cloud Storage, but also immediate processing, helping citizens to take advantage of these data [14].