HINCare: An Intelligent Timebanking System for Elderly Care

Principal Investigator: Professor Reynold C.K. CHENG (Department of Computer Science)

This project is showcased in the inaugural exhibition – Engineering for Better Living in Innovation Wing Two

Project information

Introduction

More than 30% of the population in Hong Kong will have an age of 65 or more by 2037. It is important to encourage more helpers, who can be elders themselves, to help others voluntarily. This will not only alleviate the shortage of helpers required for elderly care services, but also enables “healthy ageing” and establishes a “mutual-help” culture.

Novelty of the Project

HINCare is the first intelligent system that enables timebanking for multiple NGOs in Hong Kong. Traditional elderly care and timebanking systems often do not use big data in the decision process. Our project uses novel HIN and Al technologies to perform helper-elder matching. While most existing solutions support a single organization only, our cloud-based system can be used by multiple organizations. The gigantic HIN for storing the relationship information of elderly people, helpers, and NGOs will be useful to gerontology researchers and policymakers to extract insights about social behaviors, thereby making better decisions.

Benefit to the Community

The HINCare platform is now serving more than 2,000 elderly people and helpers in 5 NGOs in Hong Kong. The NGOs have reflected that HINCare streamlines their processes in timebanking, increases the effectiveness and efficiency in administering volunteering services. Some more NGOs will use HINCare to support timebanking projects in the next two year, benefiting more than 5,000 users.
Big Data Research: The data collected such as the pattern of the services required, locations and frequency of services, elders-volunteers matching, ratings of services, are very useful to gerontology researchers and policymakers.

About the Scholar

Professor Cheng’s main research area is data science. He is specialized in big graphs, knowledge bases, social networks, and uncertain databases.

Project poster

Project video

Project images

Achievement of the Project

Awards:

HKU Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award 2021, Faculty of Engineering
Merit Award, Asia Smart App Awards 2020, Hong Kong Wireless Technology Industry Association (WTIA)
Merit Award, Hong Kong ICT Awards 2021 (Smart People Award)

Talks:

Seminar “Timebanking HINCare Platform” — 1st Hong Kong Time Banking Network Platform Forum by Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui and The Hong Kong Council of Social Service

Connections:

NGOs: Sheng Kung Hui, Christian Family Service Centre, Hans Anderson Club, Yang Memorial Methodist Social Service, and Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong

Government: Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute and Community Investment and Inclusion Fund