The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Gerontology Technology | The government lacks leading society, lacks understanding, and the industry lacks soil. How can we age at home?

2022-05-07T00:40:37.822Z


Hong Kong's population is rapidly moving towards "super-aging". Developed regions have introduced the concept of "Geriatric Technology" to cope with the trend of population aging, hoping to use technology products to solve the problems faced by the elderly, so as to encourage the elderly at home and reduce the social burden in the long run.


Hong Kong's population is rapidly moving towards "super-aging".

Developed regions have introduced the concept of "Geriatric Technology" to cope with the trend of population aging, hoping to use technology products to solve the problems faced by the elderly, thereby encouraging aging at home and reducing social burdens in the long run.

The SAR government also intends to develop gerontology technology, but the relevant supporting policies are insufficient. In addition, Hong Kong lacks the soil to develop and apply innovation and technology products. The society has not yet formed an ecology that makes good use of gerontology technology to improve the quality of elderly services.

The only candidate for the 6th Chief Executive Election, Li Jiachao, visited the Gerontech Education and Rental Service Centre a few days ago (May 1) to learn about the needs of the elderly. Can the new government break through the predicament of gerontech development?


The SAR government has the intention to develop gerontology technology, but the relevant supporting policies are insufficient. In addition, Hong Kong lacks the soil to develop and apply innovation and technology products. The society has not yet formed an ecosystem to make good use of gerontology technology to improve the quality of elderly services.

(Photo by Xia Jialang)

Hong Kong's 2021 Population Census Brief Report shows that the population of elderly people aged 65 or above exceeds 1.45 million, accounting for 20.5% of the overall population.

As early as 2020, the Census and Statistics Department said that the elderly population of more than 2.5 million will remain in place for more than three decades.

In other words, Hong Kong is bound to enter an aging society.

Faced with the trend of aging population, developed regions usually develop "geron technology" to reduce the social burden.

The term "senior age" originated in Singapore in the 1970s. It is a respectful name for people over 60 years old, and is used to describe the elderly who are happy and forget their age.

"Geriatric Technology" is a technology product derived from the aging phenomenon of the population. It combines the development of robotic technology, big data analysis, cloud computing and other technologies to help the elderly solve problems in daily life autonomy, health inspection, home safety, rehabilitation and health care. and social life, etc., so as to improve the quality of life and self-care ability of the elderly.

As for Hong Kong, "aging at home" and "continuing of care" are also the basic principles of the elderly policy. Unfortunately, the authorities have not played a leading role, neither actively popularizing the concept of primary care, nor vigorously developing the application of geriatric technology.

Some 800 residential care homes for the elderly in Hong Kong are generally faced with problems such as shortage of places, long waiting time, too small per capita area, and insufficient nursing staff.

It is necessary for Hong Kong to develop gerontological technology to encourage aged at home.

(Hong Kong 01 cartography)

Lack of government leadership, lack of supporting facilities


, slow development of ageing technology

At first glance, the SAR government does have the intention to develop gerontology technology.

For example, the Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced in her first Policy Address in October 2017 that the government would set aside one billion yuan to promote the development of ageing technology. Subsidize elderly service units to try out and purchase technology products.

Later, in the 2020 Policy Address, Carrie Lam announced the establishment of a "Geriatric Technology Platform" under the "Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund" that can promote cooperation among all parties. The fund subsequently appointed the Hong Kong Council of Social Service. (HKCSS) led and partnered with nine other organizations to form a "Co-creation Organization", which is responsible for the design, establishment and operation, with the hope of improving the quality of life of the elderly and their ability to live independently and take care of themselves. staff and nursing facilities.

In addition, the HKSAR Government has also entrusted the HKCSS to promote the application of innovative technologies in long-term care services to the industry, coordinate and coordinate the cooperation of all parties, and hold an annual geriatric technology expo and summit.

Last year, the HKCSS also launched a four-and-a-half-year "Geriatric Technology Education and Rental Service Pilot Project" funded by the Jockey Club to assist the elderly in renting suitable elderly equipment, including special-purpose wheelchairs and medical beds.

Chen Wenyi, business director of the HKCSS, said that more than 800 people have benefited from the program so far.

Chen Wenyi, business director of the HKCSS, pointed out that foreign countries have already introduced different types of technology applications in elderly care services, and foreign seniors have three treasures for discharge: electric beds, electric wheelchairs and smart home tools.

If the Gerontology Project subsidizes the elderly to use related products, the elderly can basically take care of themselves at home.

(provided by respondents)

But in fact, the development of "geron technology" is quite slow.

First of all, the last Legislative Council only discussed the application of Gerontology Technology in Hong Kong three times in brief meetings, and there has been no attention from the executive and legislative bodies for the time being.

Secondly, at the end of May last year, the Legislative Council Secretariat compiled documents and cited government data to point out that the above-mentioned one-billion-dollar "Innovation and Technology Application Fund for Elderly and Rehabilitation" has only been approved in three batches of $200 million to subsidize about 970 elderly and Rehabilitation service units have purchased or leased more than 4,200 technology products, and as of April 29 this year, the fund has just completed the seventh batch of applications; it can be seen from the positive response that the authorities need to increase the amount and speed up support.

It is worth mentioning that at present, the Innovation and Technology Application Fund for the Elderly and Rehabilitation mainly provides services for applications from non-governmental organizations, professional groups, industrial and commercial organizations, etc., but does not accept applications for personal status, which may underestimate the actual demand.

However, the authorities appear to have no plans for improvement.

At the same time, gerontech products are relatively large, but many private residential care homes for the elderly are already in the dilemma of limited space for use, making it difficult to use the products effectively.

In this regard, the SAR government has no plans to intervene.

On the road of slow development of ageing technology, the government's implementation attitude and thinking can be said to be close to "laying down".

First of all, the authorities do not have a deep understanding of gerontech, nor do they have a clear positioning. They only allocated very little resources to this new product, and then handed it over to social welfare organizations to promote it. In practice, it did not solve many practical problems; Secondly, when different stakeholders have reported various difficulties to the government, the authorities have not conducted an in-depth review and made improvements. It is no wonder that the popularity is limited.

In 2017, the HKCSS and the United Hong Kong Foundation, a think tank, jointly released Hong Kong's first gerontech report "Gerontech Overview Report", which listed 24 deficiencies in Hong Kong's gerontech ecosystem.

At the end of last year, the United Hong Kong Foundation released a review of the effectiveness of "Technology for Ageing - Building an Age-Living Community", which pointed out that most of the defects were only slightly improved, and three defects showed signs of deterioration.

(screenshot of the report)

Innovation and technology, no soil, no ecology


, innate deficiencies in ageing technology

At the end of last year, the United Hong Kong Fund pointed out that three deficiencies in gerontech are showing signs of worsening, including insufficient retirement protection, lack of incentives for scholars to engage in gerontech research, and complicated medical device registration procedures.

Gerontology technology started 5 years ago, and there is still a lot of room for improvement. Why?

As a part of innovative technology, senior technology is closely related to the soil of innovation and technology.

In this regard, Chen Wenyi shared her four observations with "Hong Kong 01".

First of all, Hong Kong lacks a mature and complete smart service ecosystem. The government should strengthen infrastructure construction and fully cooperate with smart services including gerontology.

Chen Wenyi gave an example, real-time monitoring and collection of air quality index, temperature, etc. that are invisible to the naked eye, using big data and artificial intelligence for data analysis, optimizing the efficiency and operation of technological products, and laying a solid foundation for the use of technological products.

Secondly, building a smart service ecosystem requires a sufficient talent pool. However, the current "talent shortage" in Hong Kong's science and technology innovation is not overnight.

Chen Wenyi said that in order to establish a complete system, R&D, promotion, use, feedback and improvement of products are inseparable from talent development and training. Therefore, the government cannot ignore the manpower in the technology sector.

Finally, the technological development in Hong Kong is still in its infancy, and the society's understanding of gerontology is generally insufficient.

Chen Wenyi, for example, has developed gerontology technology for more than 40 years in Japan, and has dedicated educational channels to promote its ideas to the society, while Hong Kong has only started doing it for five years. Sensitivity, acceptance and willingness to learn.

Li Jiachao, the only candidate for the 6th Chief Executive Election, visited the Gerontech Education and Rental Service Centre a few days ago (May 1) to understand the needs of the elderly.

(Li Jiachao's campaign page)

In addition, the government should also formulate policy directions to promote the interconnection between the government, the industry and the people, and fully collect, integrate and use data to analyze the current status of products.

However, the Internet Society of Hong Kong released the "Hong Kong Open Data Index (HKODI) 2021/22 Evaluation Report" this year, pointing out that Hong Kong's data science development level and data openness are not ideal.

It is true that the development of data science is crucial to the intelligentization of social services.

On the one hand, the establishment of sufficient databases will facilitate the research, development and application of technological products.

Chen Wenyi listed a wide variety of senior technology products, such as earphones that can monitor the elderly's breathing, body temperature, vascular health and other indicators. Different products involve technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, sensors, and mechanical technology.

On the other hand, it is conducive to improving social service policies and accurately solving problems.

At present, both the official and the private sector lack more efficient and scientific data search methods, which limits policy research.

Chen Wenyi also pointed out that the interconnection of data and data between different stakeholders in the social welfare sector has not been achieved. If the government formulates policy directions and encourages the industry to integrate and analyze data, it will definitely help the development of social services.

Huang Heping, director-general of policy research and advocacy at the HKCSS, said that the government has made a lot of progress compared with a decade ago, but it is still not enough in terms of open data.

Although the Census and Statistics Department may be concerned about the misuse of data and the disclosure of personal privacy, this is not an unsolvable dilemma, nor can it be used as an excuse to reduce the degree of data openness. Open data standards.

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2022-05-07

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-09T05:14:24.875Z
News/Politics 2024-03-26T07:15:16.150Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.