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academics lack incentives to pursue research with social and Hong Kong’s gerontech ecosystem has become more integrated,
economic impact; we will discuss how to improve this issue as represented by the more solidified funnel under “Present” in
in Section 5.2. The third relates to the exhausting medical the figure. This has enabled more end-users to access and use
device registration process, which obtained a score of -0.23. gerontech, represented by the increase in spheres reaching the
This gap refers to how medical devices can require additional demand-side and the increase in number of users. The growth in
certification—involving time-consuming registration—that supply has also organically increased the demand for gerontech,
non-medical devices do not require (OHKF, 2017, June). We with more end-users being willing to try and purchase gerontech.
will discuss how to improve this issue in Section 1.3. While these are positive signs, we believe more can be done
to further grow the gerontech ecosystem. We will describe
However, majority of the gaps only saw little improvement,
these key levers and their corresponding recommendations.
with 18 of the 24 gaps scoring between 0–0.5. Moreover, there
were numerous gaps where ≥ 20% of respondents indicated One area of need is further differentiation between different
that they did not know or had no opinion (highlighted in red market players and their corresponding market needs. For
colour in Figure 5), specifically those related to different forms of example, on the supply-side, companies of different sizes have
collaboration and technical support for supply-side organisations. different needs; also, local companies have different needs
compared to international ones. On the demand-side, there is
Put together, our survey findings suggest that there remain
a need to distinguish between elderly and PwDs who live in the
many areas within Hong Kong’s gerontech ecosystem that
community versus those in residential settings.
still do not receive adequate support or attention. These
areas of insufficiency serve the basis of how we identified the Another area of need is more strategic planning on how to
key levers that will help mobilise and enhance Hong Kong’s increase and better facilitate the flow of gerontech products
gerontech ecosystem in the coming years. and services from supply-side to demand-side. This is because
we expect more suppliers and end-users within the local gerontech
Figure 7 represents the overall storyline and structure of
ecosystem in the coming years, which will result in a higher volume
our report. In 2017, when we first published our report,
of gerontech products flowing from supply-side to demand-side,
Hong Kong’s gerontech ecosystem was very fragmented,
which in turn requires more strategic planning on how to facilitate
represented by the funnel with several cracks. In addition to there
and accommodate that increased flow. The increase in quantity
not being many supply-side players, there were few gerontech
and flow is represented by the enlarged supply side box, increased
products and services—represented by the spheres—available
number of demand-side users, increased number of spheres
on the market, and these products were not reaching target users
flowing through the funnel, and expansion of the funnel’s mouth.
due to lack of support connecting supply-side with demand-side.
The facets of strategic planning required for ecosystem facilitation
and development are depicted by the three sub-categories of
Due to all the improvements in initiatives from the past few years,
“Infrastructure”, “Investment”, and “Talent”.
we have seen an increase in the number of supply-side players.
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