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Recommendation 4: Apply the September 2020 on a project that helps non-Chinese speaking
kindergarten students improve their Chinese proficiency (SIE
Pay-for-Success (PFS) model
Fund Piloting Pay-for-Success, 2021).
to gerontech
PFS is a model particularly suitable for testing innovative and
PFS is an innovative financing model for social services, which preventive services, which greatly suits the nature of gerontech
we introduced in our report Financial Innovation for Social products and services. In Hong Kong, there is also a great need
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Impacts: An advocacy report on Pay-for-Success, as illustrated to move beyond thinking about gerontech at an individual product
in Figure 20 (OHKF, 2017, November). In short, private investors level towards considering the possibilities that gerontech provides
fund a social project under the agreement that—only if the service in terms of innovative service delivery models. We therefore
provider meets pre-determined outcome-based Key Performance recommend using PFS as an innovative way to bring together
Indicators (KPIs) measured through social impact assessments— public and private financiers within the gerontech industry.
will the Government then repay the private investor with interest.
The main benefit of PFS for the Government is risk-sharing.
Because investors carry the initial risk, there is more possibility
to fund innovative or preventive programmes that are not yet
covered by the Government (OHKF, 2017, November). In Hong
Kong, SIE Fund commissioned the city’s first PFS project in

54 One of the most important aspects of PFS is for contractual parties to agree on clearly identifiable and measurable social outcomes. The gerontech industry is itself still determining
what types of social outcomes are clearly identifiable and measurable. They are also developing testing mechanisms to evaluate these outcomes, for example via the GT Platform’s
Testing Support initiative. Indeed, there is already some exploration of using PFS in relation to gerontech. For example, in Israel, a combined online-offline service delivery model will
seek to alleviate the loneliness of 200 elders in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv Foundation, 2021).

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