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Overview • Section 3.2 will focus on how to provide elderly and PwD 3
in private housing with home modification subsidies to
facilitate subsequent adoption of gerontech.
Following our analysis of the challenges and needs that supply-
side and demand-side respectively face, this report will now
3.1 District-level accessibility to gerontech
consider how to better increase and facilitate the flow of gerontech Infrastructure
products and services between supply-side and demand-side. As It is undeniable that there has been an increase in awareness
mentioned in Introduction, we believe that further development of gerontech in recent years. It was a key gap identified in
of Hong Kong’s gerontech ecosystem requires more strategic our first report (Gap 1), and the gap that received the highest
planning on how to expand the width of funnel to enable smoother level of improvement in our survey (score 1.08). However, we
and larger quantity of flow from supply to demand side. The see that are still some areas for improvement, namely
first aspect to consider is creating relevant gerontech-friendly improving end-users’ access to gerontech in their
infrastructures, of which there are currently few. local neighbourhoods.

By gerontech-friendly infrastructures, we mean both public Figure 18 illustrates the various types of awareness-raising
infrastructures that display and utilise gerontech, as well as private gerontech initiatives that have taken place in recent years. In
home infrastructures that can accommodate the installation of 2016, the Golden Age Foundation hosted the first annual Golden
gerontech. These two types of gerontech-friendly infrastructures Age Expo & Summit (GAES) at the Exhibition Centre (red pin).
represent two infrastructural difficulties that Hong Kong is currently Then, after the inaugural GIES was hosted at the Exhibition
facing. Namely, many end-users cannot easily view gerontech Centre in 2017 (red pin), different organisations followed up
products and do not know where to procure gerontech products with one-off gerontech events in local districts (blue pins).
within their local communities. Also, many end-users who live in More recently, organisations have set up physical gerontech
the community—particularly those living in private housing—have showrooms (yellow pins) that seek to educate local residents
difficulties in installing gerontech. These are the two primary about gerontech. The Government also announced their plan to
problems that will be addressed in this chapter. create a gerontech showroom in Kwun Tong (Civil Service Bureau
(CSB), 2021). 47
This chapter consists of two sub-sections:
• Section 3.1 will focus on how to leverage District Health
Centres (DHC) to make gerontech accessible to Hong Kong
residents in all 18 districts.

47 In the 2017 and 2018 Policy Addresses, the Government announced that it would build a new civil service college in Kwun Tong. The building will consist of two high-rise and low-rise
buildings, with the high-rises used for civil service college, and the low-rise blocks providing social welfare and district facilities, including the construction of a government-run
gerontech exhibition centre (CSB, 2021). However, the construction of this civil service college and gerontech exhibition centre will likely take several years to complete (LWB, 2020).
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