Collection of Papers: Innovative Applications of QR Codes Across Various Industries
Original: https://cli.im/article/detail/2107
According to relevant statistics, 10 billion QR codes are scanned globally every day, with China accounting for about 90% of the world's QR code applications. On average, each person in China scans QR codes more than 6 times per day.
As the "digital ID card" in the era of the Internet of Everything, QR codes are widely used in industries such as logistics and transportation, manufacturing, conference check-ins, mobile payments, catering services, asset management, and marketing. They have become a familiar part of many people's daily lives.
Why are QR codes so prevalent in the Chinese market?
In addition to the habit of scan-to-pay, many experts and scholars are using QR codes as development tools. They combine QR codes with work and life needs, continuously exploring innovative applications of QR codes in vertical industries, and publishing academic papers to further uncover practical scenarios for QR codes.
QR Codes + Healthcare: New Approaches to Chronic Disease Management
According to data released by the National Health Commission, China has 240 million people with chronic diseases, a number expected to exceed 300 million by 2025. Chronic disease management services have become a necessity, urgently requiring low-cost, lightweight, and widely familiar solutions.
As early as around 2019, Ma Yamin and others from the Department of Thoracic Surgery at the Cancer Hospital affiliated with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences explored the application of CaoLiao QR codes in health education for patients after esophageal cancer radical surgery. They randomly divided 80 post-operative patients into two groups.
The control group received traditional health education, where responsible nurses provided one-on-one face-to-face guidance and distributed written health education materials upon admission, one day before surgery, and after surgery. The observation group used CaoLiao QR codes for nursing intervention, receiving one-on-one guidance and being provided with QR codes for scanning and accessing information at any time.
The final experimental results showed that 75% of patients in the observation group had a disease knowledge awareness rate of 80% or higher, significantly higher than the 37.5% in the control group. In their paper "The Impact of CaoLiao QR Code Health Education on Postoperative Recovery of Esophageal Cancer Patients," Ma Yamin et al. wrote: "Through oral education by nurses, patients and their families gained a preliminary understanding of relevant knowledge. Combining this with scanning CaoLiao QR codes to implement health education for consolidation and deepening helped improve patients' mastery of health knowledge, enhance their daily living abilities and motor functions, and strengthen their self-management capabilities, thereby shortening postoperative recovery time and improving patient prognosis."
Similarly, Jin Yangmei and others from the General Surgery Department of Taizhou Hospital in Zhejiang Province used QR codes for pathology knowledge education. They created videos of relevant nursing knowledge and placed them on QR codes, encouraging patients and families to scan and learn, and assessing learning outcomes through secondary follow-ups.
In "The Impact of CaoLiao QR Code Collaborative Management on Disease Knowledge and Self-Care Ability of Patients with Preventive Enterostomy," Jin Yangmei compared experimental results and concluded: "As a new management method, QR code collaborative management plays a significant role in problem assessment, intervention, and outcome evaluation. It effectively improves disease knowledge and self-care ability in patients with preventive enterostomy and reduces the incidence of stoma complications."
The technical principles behind these explorations are not complex. The role of QR codes is to serve as an information gateway connecting online and offline. However, frontline medical workers creatively used QR codes to connect people with information, reducing the cost of information delivery to users. This not only unlocked the application potential of QR codes but also enabled ordinary individuals to use QR codes to solve problems, offering new approaches to chronic disease management.
Attached related papers:
“Innovative Application of CaoLiao QR Codes in Health Education for Hepatobiliary Surgery”
QR Codes + Education: Unleashing the Imagination of Interactive Teaching
The reason patients and their families prefer scanning QR codes for information over written health education materials is that QR codes have subtly changed how we interact with the world. It is no longer just one-way information acquisition but has evolved into a new path of effective interactive information dissemination.
Chen Dekang from the Guangdong Meteorological Science and Technology Training Center, based on the dynamic QR code functionality of CaoLiao, combined with the business needs of meteorological training in Guangdong, developed a meteorological training QR code management application system without the involvement of IT personnel. This system achieved functions such as training class check-ins, training course (meeting) registration, training information announcements, and training video course downloads and viewing.
Taking training class check-ins as an example, trainees can use WeChat to scan the QR code for check-in, using forms to collect information such as name, phone number, unit, and location. To prevent proxy check-ins, Chen Dekang required trainees to upload on-site selfies, combined with automatically recorded time and location watermarks on the images, largely avoiding situations where others check in on their behalf or check-ins from off-site.
As shared by Chen Dekang in "Design and Implementation of a Meteorological Training QR Code Management Application System": "The meteorological training QR code management application system can not only automatically conduct class attendance but also extend mobile learning functions, facilitating trainees' management and use of mobile learning materials and improving work efficiency."
Professor Cheng Xingguo from the School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering at Guizhou Minzu University utilized CaoLiao QR codes, Rain Classroom, and micro-lectures to design an interactive teaching method based on mobile classrooms, where QR codes are used to督促学生预习 (supervise student previews). Professor Cheng would upload the next day's class content onto QR codes in advance and use features like dynamic data statistics to view students'预习情况 (preview status) in the management backend.
Professor Cheng Xingguo's "An Interactive Teaching Method Based on Mobile Classroom" was supported by the Guizhou Minzu University Teaching Reform Research Project "Research on the Teaching Reform of the 'University Computer Application Foundation' Course Combining Multimedia Quick Technology and App Application Technology." It not only enhanced and enriched teaching resources and opportunities but also played a positive role in cultivating students' autonomous learning ability and sustainable learning ability.
There are actually many similar applications. Some use QR codes to assist in physics teaching, some use QR codes to manage chemistry laboratories, and others use QR codes to record plant DNA fingerprints and genetic relationships... The QR code itself may just be a tool for interactive teaching in the classroom, but the applications derived from QR codes and the tangible innovations in every环节 (link/segment) of teaching and training are continuously generating new value.
Attached related papers:
“Design and Implementation of a Meteorological Training QR Code Management Application System”
“An Interactive Teaching Method Based on Mobile Classroom”
QR Codes + Maintenance: Applicable "Up in the Sky" and "Down in the Ground"
If the application of QR codes in the medical field挖掘了内容展示入口的潜力 (uncovered the potential of content display gateways), and their application in education拓宽了二维码和表单的想象空间 (broadened the imagination space for QR codes and forms), then there is also a group of engineers working on the production frontlines who have sparked innovation by combining QR codes with equipment management.
Zhao Qingliang is an engineer at the Maintenance and Delivery Center of Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co., Ltd., focusing on aircraft maintenance and delivery support. Since aircraft maintenance requires many professional and even specially customized tools and equipment, and traditional equipment nameplates provide limited information that is cumbersome to modify, Engineer Zhao used "dynamic QR codes" to build a set of aircraft maintenance equipment usage and maintenance system.
Addressing the different needs of users, administrators, and engineers, Engineer Zhao recorded tool and equipment user manuals, equipment files, inspection and maintenance records, etc., using "dynamic QR codes." Equipment users can query the status and safety warnings of tools and equipment at any time; equipment inspectors can receive online work orders and provide timely feedback with pictures, audio, or even video records after completing maintenance tasks; management engineers can update data in real-time in the system backend, monitor equipment status, and promptly update tool and equipment usage instructions, equipment validity, maintenance records, fault reporting and repairs, achieving multi-position linkage and systematic, paperless management of tools and equipment.
While Zhao Qingliang explored the application of QR codes in aircraft maintenance and delivery support, Hao Longsong and others from Xincheng Gold Mine of Shandong Gold Mining Co., Ltd. used QR codes to design and implement an online equipment management model suitable for trackless equipment in underground mines.
Over years of equipment management, Xincheng Gold Mine's mandatory maintenance management system for trackless equipment used manually filled paper forms. However, these forms were easily lost, soiled, or damaged during circulation. Furthermore, limited by drivers' writing abilities, handwriting was often illegible, requiring dedicated personnel to distribute, collect, and report all forms, resulting in low work efficiency and high labor costs.
In "Trackless Equipment Management System for Underground Mines Based on QR Code Technology," Hao Longsong et al. introduced the digital management method after using the QR code system: "Whether underground or above ground, relevant operators and managers can log into the system online in real-time, reducing cumbersome procedures such as document checking, form filling, and maintenance record signing, improving maintenance efficiency by nearly 10%. Moreover, through the system management backend, equipment management data can be statistically analyzed, exported, and analyzed online in real-time, avoiding the drawbacks of paper-based statistics and effectively preventing secondary data entry, analysis, and the generation of false data, providing strong technical support for traceable equipment management."
Attached related papers:
“Aircraft Maintenance Equipment Usage and Maintenance System”
“Trackless Equipment Management System for Underground Mines Based on QR Code Technology”
“Innovative Application of QR Code Technology in Hospital 6S Management”
Conclusion
QR codes are not a complex technology, and CaoLiao QR codes merely provide tools for building applications. Frankly speaking, the depth of QR code applications by many users has exceeded our expectations.
Hidden behind each academic paper are instances of innovation and attempts to integrate QR codes into production and life. Through practical business exploration, QR codes have been continuously endowed with new value: a small QR code is used to connect people, tasks, and objects, to solve encountered small problems, achieving refined management through lightweight applications at low cost.
We believe that the innovative exploration of QR codes and related academic papers cannot be fully covered in a single article. Many valuable application scenarios remain to be discovered. We hope more experts, scholars, and engineers will participate and share their achievements and experiences in QR code applications.