SocTalk Seminar – Making good use of Innovation & Technology Fund for Better Living

The Seminar named “Making good use of Innovation & Technology Fund for Better Living” was organized by SocTech Hong Kong under Information Technology Resource Centre, HKCSS on 25^th Aug 2017.  Mr. Vicent CK Tse (Assist. Project Manager, ITRC, HKCSS) was MC and introduced the seminar agenda.

Then Mr. Peter Kwok (Senior Manager, I TRC, HKCSS) introduced SocTech that aimed to apply different technology into our society and community.  

The first speaker team members were Ms. Loretta Wong (Chief Executive Officer (Fund for Better Live), ITB) and Ms. Lorraine Kam (Senior Executive Officer (Fund for Better Live), ITB) and their topic named “Innovation & Technology Fund for Better Living”.  The objectives of that funding were to subsidize and promote innovation & technology projects to improve people’s daily living and making them more convenient, more comfortable and safer.  It needed to address the needs of specific community groups such as elderly, disabled and youth.  

IT companies needed to collaborate with NGOs, Public Bodies, Professional Bodies and Trade Associations to apply this funding. 

There were eight application requirements below.

1.      Able to benefit the public at large or specific groups, and in line with government policies

2.      Innovative application of technologies

3.      Non-profit-making during funding period

4.      Roll out within 12 months

5.      Run for at least 2 consecutive years after roll-out (except for project which is one-off in nature)

6.      Project deliverables can be in form of mobile app, product, tool, service, software, etc.

7.      Primarily developed within Hong Kong

8.      Any intellectual property rights created will be vested with the successful applicant and open for free under normal circumstances.

Project themes included “Daily Living”, “Education”, “Environment”, “Health”, “Safety”, “Transport” and others.

The funding max is upto HK$5 million using ratio of 10% match 90%.  The project expenditures included manpower, equipment and other direct costs (e.g. delivery, publicity, etc.).  The administrative overhead is less or equal to 15%.  Some items are non-fundable cost such as Building facilities, Utilities, Transport, Entertainment expenses, Duty visit and Staff training.

Procurement procedure should be taken care as the following guideline from ICAC.

Finally, the evaluation criteria were briefed included benefits to public, innovation & technology content, feasibility and sustainability, financial issue, technical and management capability. 

The second speaker was Mr. Eric Tang (ITRC, HKCSS) and his topic named “From Conceptualization to Implementation”.  His talk content included conceptualization, funding application and implementation.  

Firstly, he compared the Social Welfare Development Fund (SWDF) and Innovation & Technology Fund for Better Living (FBL).  Then he briefed the ideas could be come from focus group and through understanding of the technologies to implement it.  

Finally, Mr. Eric Tang briefed the application of FBL that target beneficiary analysis should be performed such as assessment of number of target beneficiaries and evaluation of the penetration rate.  Moreover, the applicant must appoint a Project coordinator who is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Project (e.g. monitoring the proper use of the FBL grant).  

The third speaker was Mr. Leung (Social worker) and his topic named “Elder has power to promote the development of information technology”.  In the beginning, he asked us how old we thing to be elder.  Participants’ feedback were from 60 to 70 years old.  Our perception to the elder was not right because they had many capabilities hadn’t been discovered.

Then Mr. Leung introduced their projects for elder participating to create Hong Kong word style database.  Many words in Hong Kong were not found in the computer for 30 years long and no one to handle it.  Many database were come from Taiwan but not followed our Education Bureau guideline in 1986.  

They created 7000 characters and were waiting OUHK scholars review for publication.  Their database would be free download for Webfont and for Android or iOS.

Lastly, Mr. Leung’s partner demonstrated how to create / correct the Chinese word character through the specific but open source program.

Mr. Richard Chan (Managing Director, Hong Kong RFID) was the fourth speaker and his presentation was “TeamCare Empowering 360^o Caring”. He introduced the project which partner with Mr. Albert Au, founder & CEO of Acesobee.  

He told us the brand “Acesobee” that “Aceso” means the Greek goddess of the healing process and “bee” means team work.  Their TeamCare app was a health record sharing system which adopted by the hospitals for monitoring the health history of the elderly.

The last speaker was Dr. Jamie Chiu (Chinical Psychologist & Founder) and her presentation topic was “Brightly Project”.  She briefed their Vision was “A world where depression does not steal away bright futures” and Mission was “Using AI technology to change how depression is detected and supported”.  

Dr. Chiu said that suicide was the leading cause of death for young people in Hong Kong and more than 50% of youth report feeling “depressed” and “useless”.  Therefore, mental health screening and management dashboard for education institutes were needed.  Through the machine learning algorithm, it could transfer surveys to individual conversations for risk detection on behavioral and psychological factors.  She hoped that AI Chabot for schools and NGOs to easily engage youth with support.

During the seminar, I met my cousin (Mr. Chris Lai) and we had long time no see.

He is the founder of “Goody Bag Hong Kong” and it is quite famous and innovative service in Hong Kong.

Reference:

Information Technology Resource Centre, HKCSS - http://itrc.hkcss.org.hk/

SocTech Hong Kong - https://www.soctech.hk/

The Innovation and Technology Fund for Better Living (FBL) - http://www.itb.gov.hk/en/fbl/