Applied Research Projects

The SIE Fund supports The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Education University of Hong Kong to conduct applied research projects. Results of the projects will help beneficiaries, including persons with mild neurocognitive disorder, stroke patients, elderly, students and women of diverse race, persons with hearing, visual or speech impairment, as well as autistic children, overcome hurdles in daily living. A summary of these projects is presented below.

 

Utilizing Telemedicine and Mobile Health Platform in Facilitating Acute Heart Failure Treatment

The project aims to develop a mobile health platform with wearable devices to improve medical care for acute heart failure patients from low-income families.  Read more


Education, Screening and Rehabilitation of the Vestibular System in Older Adults

The project aims to raise awareness about vestibular system health among the elderly, their caregivers and medical staff, expecting to reduce fall accident rates associated with vestibular issues.  Read more


Arrhythmia detection by smart devices

The project aims to enable patients to record their suspected arrhythmia for clinic evaluation using a readily available smart device.  Read more


Empowering Youth from Underprivileged Community: Enhancing Programming Skills and Mathematical Knowledge for STEM Teaching and Learning

The project aims to address the resource disparities and uneven access to computational thinking (CT) education by providing free courses for underprivileged youths to develop their mathematical and programming competence.  Read more


Culturally adapted sleep intervention - A brief online sleep intervention tailored to South Asian population
in Hong Kong

This project aims to develop a low-cost and easily accessible mobile app on cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia to deliver evidence-based sleep strategies in both Hindi and English with adapted materials incorporating community values for South Asians in Hong Kong.  Read more


Computer Use for Seniors on Mood Improvement
and Logic Enhancement

The project aims to identify and support elderly people with depression, potentially improving their mood and overall well-being through a Computerised Cognitive Training (CCT) programme.  Read more


A personalised health coach with wearable technologies for intensive lifestyle intervention in prediabetes

The project aims to offer a technologically enhanced Intensive Lifestyle Intervention (ILI) programme to individuals with diabetes or pre-diabetes, targeting reversion to normal glucose tolerance and achieving weight and exercise targets, thus reducing the incidence of diabetes and associated complications in the long run.  Read more


“Hou2” Living Gallery: Co-creating Age-friendly Neighbourhood in Hong Kong's Private Housing Estate

The project aims to address the double-ageing (ageing of the population and residential buildings) challenges by developing quick-win prototypes in a co-design approach through various engagements of key stakeholders to improve the age-friendliness of a private housing estate.  Read more


Education and Promotion of Weight Control in School Children of Hong Kong

The project aims to reduce possible health consequences associated with obesity / underweight situation among children with a holistic approach to educating children, teachers and parents about healthy diet and exercise. It also helps improve the health literacy of parents, teachers, and children, while leveraging a peer coaching approach for sustainable self-support among youth.  Read more


E-learning platform for enhancing life planning competence of people with intellectual disabilities

The project aims to address the gaps of people with intellectual disabilities through an innovative e-learning platform, to equip them with the knowledge, skills and attitude required, enhance their life-planning skills, and promote equality and social inclusion.  Read more


Promoting Deaf Access to Justice: Legal Basics in Hong Kong Sign Language

The project aims to reduce inequalities in Deaf people during legal proceedings by enhancing their legal awareness and providing equal access to basic legal knowledge, and address the insufficient support of the legal rights and communication needs of Deaf people.  Read more


Thriving through the storms: A school-based mental health promotion program for building psychological flexibility and resilience

The project aims to support teachers and train peer ambassadors based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles to help students to build better psychological flexibility.  Read more


Prevention of non-communicable diseases through screening and educating individuals on health-risk behaviours in the community

The project aims to use mobile intervention to screen health-risk behaviours and encourage a healthy lifestyle, as well as to promote primary healthcare in the community.  Read more


Enhancing Mental Health of the Deaf Community in Hong Kong (Phase 2)

The project aims to promote equal access to mental health resources and create a friendly environment for the deaf/hard of hearing in mental health service.  Read more


Reducing inequality in women’s health: Providing cervical screening and decision-aid counselling by trained peers in deprived populations

The project aims to address the issue of insufficient support and awareness for low-income women in cervical screening and promote primary healthcare and health equity in the underprivileged group.  Read more


Improving the psychological well-being of older adults with an online lifestyle medicine program

The project aims to offer a proven, cost-effective app-based Chanwuyi online Lifestyle Medicine Program for older adults to improve their daily habits. This lifestyle intervention programme is important for preventative care for healthy ageing, and supports primary healthcare to help prevent, treat, and manage chronic diseases and conditions.  Read more


A training programme for community health workers in promoting cervical cancer screening among South Asian ethnic minorities in Hong Kong

This project aims to address the issue of insufficient support for South Asian women in cervical cancer screening, promote health literacy and promote health equity among the South Asians.  Read more


AR-Home & AR-Centre Rehab

This project aims to develop an innovative rehab platform using augmented reality (AR)-based training to serve more patients, at rehab centres or at home, to support their rehab process of various chronic conditions.  Read more


Medical communication assistance to enhance patient engagement and health literacy

This project engages volunteers and supports vulnerable patients by utilising a mobile application and integrating a volunteer service to organise medical history to help patients in health professional consultations, so that they can have equal access to healthcare resources and support.  Read more


Promotion of palliative care and advance directives in the South Asian ethnic minority population of Hong Kong

This project aims to promote equal opportunities in palliative care among South Asia minority groups. Language and cultural-specific health manuals, community roadshows and health talks will be delivered to South Asian communities.  Read more


Educating stay-home mothers to implement paediatric massage techniques for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

This project provides evidence-based pediatric massage techniques training for stay-home mothers who have children with autism. Children with autism will benefit while stay-home mothers could work on a part-time basis to earn extra income.  Read more


Multilingual E-Resources for Vocabulary Acquisition: Enhancing Learning Cantonese as an Additional Language and Maintaining Home (Heritage) Languages

This project aims to develop web-based resources for children from culturally and linguistically diverse or ethnic minority backgrounds to acquire Cantonese to close the gap in Cantonese proficiency, achieve equal learning opportunities and promote social inclusion.  Read more


Modular Prosthetics with Interchanging Task-Specific Tools for Upper Limb Amputees

This project aims to develop a flexible, low-cost prosthetics system enabling complex tasks to enhance amputees' quality of life and wellbeing.  Read more


Capacity Building for Advance Care Planning

This project aims to promote end-of-life planning within the Chinese community to make more people understand, accept and devise their own end-of-life plans.  Read more


Screening for Mild Cognitive Impairment, Dementia, and Hearing Loss in Older Adults in the Community with Special Automated Audiological Assessments

This project aims to develop and implement cost-effective screening for mild cognitive impairment, dementia and hearing loss for elderly in the community.  Read more


Novel Interactive and Audible 3D Chinese Characters for People with Special Needs: “An Inclusive Design and Educational Workshop”

This project aims to produce “Touchable, Movable & Interactive Audible 3D Chinese Character” (TMIA3D), a toolkit for learning Chinese character components, by people with visual impairment and non-Chinese ethnic minorities.  Read more


Mindfulness-based Stigma Stress Reduction Programme for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders and their Parents

This project aims to develop an internet-based mindfulness intervention for reducing stigma stress among children with neurodevelopmental disorders and their parents.  Read more


Innovating Music for Everyone: Music Creation and Performance with e-Orch

This project aims to enhance and expand the application of “e-Orch”, a music-making application previously developed by the project team, to participants who are yet to be covered by the current pilot programs, including students in poverty, with special needs and ethnic minorities. Read more


Music Playgroup to Enhance Language Development in Infants and Toddlers: A Pilot Community Program

The project aims to offer music playgroups to improve language and neurocognitive development of infants and toddlers who are at risk of slow language development. Read more


Express Heart Check at Elderly Community Centres across 18 District of Hong Kong

The project plans to provide a public seminar, on-site focused cardiac ultrasound examination, frailty assessment and other physical tests for the elderly at each of the 41 District Elderly Community Centres or Neighbourhood Elderly Centres in Hong Kong. Read more


Intervention for promoting old-age preparation in the community

The project implements an evidence-based intervention programme to promote preparation for old age among elderly aged 55 to 70, particularly in social relationship and leisure participation. Read more


Hong Kong as an Outdoor Museum: EduVenture supports Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Learning Chinese Culture

The project aims to enable non-Chinese speaking secondary students to enhance their understanding of the city’s culture and history through EduVenture - an innovative, interactive, inquiry-based outdoor learning system. Read more


Communication Rehabilitation for Older Adults with Hearing Loss

The project aims to help adults with acquired hearing loss mitigate communication and hearing difficulties in everyday life and improve their quality of life and well-being through a rehabilitation programme with the participation of professionals. Read more


A Phone Reassurance Elderly Project (PREP) for Connecting Elders and Youth: Training, Communication, Health Knowledge Transfer

The project provides healthcare services to the elderly through a phone reassurance programme rendered by a cross-disciplinary service-learning team of university students. Read more


IntergenerationABILITY: enhancement of Physical Literacy of Students with Disabilities and Older Baby Boomers in Hong Kong

The project aims to bring the youngsters (students with special needs) and seniors together and develop their physical literacy with the goal of maintaining health, well-being and self-care ability. Read more


Personalised Child Story Channel

This project aims to develop high-quality audio stories with rich and customizable content to encourage and promote creative reading and enhance interaction between parents and children, helping students from underprivileged families in particular. Read more


Sustainable Communities Lab for People's Multifaceted Well-being

By conducting a series of community workshops/labs, this project enhances community leaders' literacy and practical skills in making ecological and people-oriented urban spaces, with the ultimate goal of building sustainable communities and cities and enhancing community psychological well-being. Read more


"Strong Shoulders For Elderly" Campaign

The project aims to promote elderly shoulder health through an online platform. Apart from information about symptoms and signs of common shoulder conditions, sets of shoulder exercises that can be performed by the older adults and online consultation service will also be provided on the online platform. Read more


Reaching Out to the Unreached Community: Delivering Mental Health Outside the Box through Whole-of-Community Campaigns

This project aims to reach out to the community to improve public knowledge about mental health and empower the community to take actions for better mental health. Read more


Hip Protectors to Prevent Hip Fracture of Older Adults in Hospitals and Nursing Homes

This project aims to work with stakeholders and introduce effective and affordable hip protectors in hospitals and nursing homes to facilitate hip fracture prevention for the elderly. Read more


Decoding the Concealed Emotions of Children with Special Educational Needs

This project introduces the use of wearable wristbands during teacher-student interaction, aiming to understand the mental states of children with special education needs (SEN) and whereby to improve student-teacher interaction. Read more


Enhancing Mental Health of the Deaf Community in Hong Kong

This project aims to enhance the mental health of hearing-impaired persons in Hong Kong by enhancing mental health literacy of deaf signers and help mental health personnel to learn basic HK Sign Language. It will translate the mental health literacy questionnaire into HK Sign Language and build an online databank containing sign-bilingual mental health information. Read more


A Concept Musical Drama on End-of-life Care and Death Attitudes in Hong Kong

The project aims to highlight the quality end-of-life care and debunk some of the misconceptions and misunderstanding towards death-related matters in Hong Kong and disseminate research findings on end-of-life care through seminars. The research findings will be presented in the form of muscial drama later. Read more


“Our Everyday. Our Borders.” A Study of Universal Accessibility in Our City

A team comprising doctors, architects and urban planners will design an elderly-friendly walkable city. Elderly are encouraged to go out, explore the “treasures” in the city and voice out their views on universal accessibility of the built environment. Read more


AI-based Colour Blindness Correction App

The project will devise an AI-based colour blindness correction solution applicable to various platforms such as smart glasses and digital displays. Its real-time, high-quality colour improvement effect will help people with colour vision deficiency to distinguish colours in daily life. Read more


Telling Stories: Digital Humanities Documentation of Linguistic Diversity in Hong Kong

The goal of the project is to document the linguistic diversity of Hong Kong and to create a digital archive which presents the inclusive linguistic profile of non-ethnic Chinese and the deaf community and is easily accessible for use as a teaching and research tool. Read more


Virtual Reality Simulation to Identify Glaucoma for Rehabilitation and Patient Education

The project aims to assess and identify disability in patients with glaucoma for rehabilitation and patient education in a cost-effective and adaptable way with the use of interactive VR environments simulating day-to-day activities in real-world. Read more


Promotion of Strength-based Approach in Understanding and Helping Children with ADHD

The strength-based and resilience-focused family intervention model for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) will be promoted through developing psychoeducational animations and disseminating information on the subject. Read more


Hearing Screening App for Early Identification of Hearing Loss in Ageing Community

Aiming to promote healthy ageing and lifestyle, the project provides a low-cost and high-efficiency pure-tone hearing screening test to help elderly citizens who have hearing loss to regain the abilities and motivation for communication. Read more


TCM Paediatric Massage Program for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This project applies traditional Chinese medicine paediatric massage to enhance the physical and psychological well-being of autistic children. Assistance will also be offered to caregivers to enable them to conduct daily therapy at home. Read more


Train the Trainers: Minority Girls and Gender Justice

The project seeks to empower young Muslim women and combat stereotypes against non-ethnic Chinese women. Training will be given to the women so that they can reach out to the local communities to talk about gender equality. Read more


Sustainable Community Innovation and Women's Empowerment from the Ground Up

Educational projects are initiated from the ground up and at the neighbourhood level. Women of diverse ethnic backgrounds will co-produce cross-cultural knowledge and experience that will result in long-term community innovation and empowerment. Read more


Speech Therapy Services For Children with Motor Speech Disorders

A new assessment protocol and an evidence-based treatment programme will be implemented for Cantonese-speaking children with speech sound disorders related to speech motor ability. Training for speech therapists to use these tools will also be provided. Read more


Realizing Children's Potential in Language Development

Using interactive and evidence-based applications to analyse children’s language development and provides early interventions, the language competency of children at risk, especially those from underprivileged families, will be enhanced. Read more


Oral Exercise Training Software for Elderly

This project aims to develop a user-friendly software, namely "Oroeasy", on oral exercises for elderly suffering from weakness in oral motor muscles to improve speech and swallowing functions. Read more


3D-printed Soft Robotic Hand for Stroke Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation training with a personalised, affordable, multi-functional 3D-printed soft robotic hand will be developed to facilitate hand function recovery for stroke rehabilitation patients so that they can reintegrate into society. Read more


Sign Language Fundamental Medical Knowledge Databank

An online databank of 100 descriptions of basic medical concepts in sign language videos and Chinese written explanations will be set up. Apart from allowing the hearing impaired to gain access to health-related information, the project enables them to select the best descriptions of their illness from the databank when consulting the doctor and hence receive more accurate diagnosis, prescription and treatment. Read more


Robot Drama Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Through robot drama therapy, this project provides early interventions to help autistic children enhance their social and learning skills. Interactive dramas of three stories about social competence will be designed. Read more


Self-management Program for People with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder

Patients with mild neurocognitive disorder are the ultimate beneficiaries. Staff from participating organisations will be trained to deliver interventions covering healthy diet, physical exercises, psychosocial coping and social engagement, etc. Read more


Real-time Chinese Sentence Learning Platform for Ethnic Minority Students

This project aims to establish an open learning platform and provide a real-time demonstration of how a Chinese sentence is made up of characters, words and constituent phrases to help non-Chinese speaking students learn Chinese more effectively. Read more


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