The IT Futures team were approached by the University of Wolverhampton’s Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing and Wolverhampton City Council to provide a solution to the dissemination of information to support dementia awareness within the city. The team designed and developed a series of posters that were embedded with Near Field Communication (NFC) tags that enable smartphones, with this now popular technology the ability to tap and receive far richer information via the web compared to the limited information provided in printed formats. The posters were also designed to be dual purpose, allowing QR Codes to be scanned by smartphones without NFC technology. [Read more…]
Horsemeat Scandal Could Have Been Avoided
The horsemeat scandal of 2013 could have been avoided if a system developed by the University of Wolverhampton to trace food was in use, according to experts.
The University, alongside eight partners across Europe, have recently completed the Farm to Fork research project.
This was a pilot 3.6m euro project which developed and utilised a range of technologies, including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to identify and trace food information across Europe from producer to consumer.
The system works by identifying individual items of food and tracking precisely what happens to them during the production process.
RFID and other technologies (such as bar codes) identify the item and allow its location and the process it is undertaken to be determined. Sensor networks allow environmental factors such as temperature and humidity to be tracked. The records are stored in a secure database from which the history of individual items can be generated. They are packaged and labelled with a QR or other code which identifies the individual item.