Applied Technology School - Sharjah

The UAE school turning students into health innovators through a learner-designed AI-powered food safety system

Applied Technology School (ATS) Sharjah, a public secondary school in Sharjah, UAE, is pioneering how schools protect learner health through its student-designed Intelligent Healthy Food Dispensing Solution, designed using emerging technologies capable of preventing allergic reactions and improving nutritional choices in real time. After years of traditional health campaigns, posters, and awareness drives failed to meaningfully reduce food-related health incidents inside the school, leaders realised that students were simply not responding to being told what healthy living looks like. While there were rising concerns around obesity, diabetes, asthma, food allergies, and unhealthy eating habits, change was not going to happen until learners had the opportunity to become a part of the solution themselves.

To put them at the centre of their own lifestyle choices, the school challenged learners to rethink how health protection could operate within the school. What emerged was the Intelligent Healthy Food Dispensing Solution. At the heart of the system is a centralised health database storing verified medical information, including allergies, chronic illnesses, and dietary restrictions, validated together with families and school health staff. When students approach the dispenser, facial recognition technology identifies them instantly and filters available food options according to their individual medical profiles. If a student tries to select a food item that conflicts with their health requirements, the system automatically blocks the selection, records the attempt, and sends real-time alerts and reports to nurses and parents.

What distinguishes ATS Sharjah is not only the sophistication of the solution, but the educational culture that made it possible. Developed by a multidisciplinary innovation team of students in Grades 10–12, in collaboration with nurses, teachers, canteen staff, parents, and IT specialists. Learner-led teams worked through the full human-centred design process, learning how to identify user needs, define system requirements, apply AI technologies, build engineering solutions, and test systems against real-world scenarios.

Through the process, the campus has become a living laboratory where learners now use authentic real-world problems to develop practical technologies capable of improving the lives of the community members around them. Project-based learning is embedded through an interdisciplinary model combining engineering, computer science, electronics, AI, ethical reasoning, systems thinking, and health education. Students have gone on to participate in broader health and wellbeing campaigns including ‘Smart Choices, Safe Lives’, ‘Know Your Allergens’, and ‘Move, Fuel, Thrive’, which promote balanced nutrition, physical activity, and mental wellbeing.

Families were also given the opportunity to become deeply involved in the system’s development and operation because the project required strong trust around medical data and student safety, which strengthened family bonds and created a community-wide feeling of connection and collaborative learning.

The impact of the working solution has already been life-changing for learners. Among the 60 students with documented food allergies using the system, the school recorded zero canteen-related allergic incidents following implementation. The system has blocked more than 200 attempted selections of allergen-risk foods, each followed by targeted counselling or parent communication. Within a pilot group of 25 overweight or obese students, 70% recorded reductions in BMI percentile over two academic terms, with healthy food selections increasing from approximately 45% to 68% of total items dispensed within the first three months.

Several students involved in the project have since gone on to pursue engineering and computer science degrees, while others have received scholarships abroad linked to skills developed through the initiative.

Nurses and canteen staff report that students are increasingly able to explain their own medical alerts and ask for healthier alternatives. Internal surveys also found that 92% of parents of allergic students feel more confident about their children’s safety at school, while 88% of participating students said the system helped them think more carefully about what they eat.

The Intelligent Healthy Food Dispensing Solution is being prepared for expansion across the wider ATS network and potentially into hospitals and additional public health environments across the UAE.