Gerontechnology funding in Hong Kong: the I&T Fund

What the I&T Fund is, and who may apply

The Innovation and Technology Fund for Application in Elderly and Rehabilitation Care, usually shortened to the I&T Fund, is the Hong Kong scheme that pays for technology in elderly services and rehabilitation services. The Government earmarked HK$1 billion to establish it in December 2018, so that technology would improve the quality of life of service users and reduce the burden and pressure on care staff and carers. In 2024-25 the Government injected a further HK$1 billion, which raised the subsidies and extended the fund to technology products suitable for household use.

The Social Welfare Department (SWD) administers the fund, and publishes the application forms, the guidance notes and the fund manual on the fund's own page. An Assessment Panel examines the applications and advises on them, and recommends the amount of each grant. The SWD arranges the technical assessment that the panel reads. The manual is issued by the Director of Social Welfare, who may amend, supplement, apply, interpret and make exceptions to it, and it is reviewed periodically, so the version on the fund page governs.

A service unit must be receiving subvention or subsidy from the SWD, and must be providing residential care for elderly persons or persons with disabilities, community care and support services for the elderly, or day rehabilitation and community support services for persons with disabilities. The applicant is the service unit or the organisation running it, not an individual resident and not a family.

For procurement and rental, the fund was extended from Tranche 8, which opened in September 2022, to all non-subsidised private and self-financing residential care homes for the elderly and for persons with disabilities. That is the route most housing operators who are not subvented will use, and it is worth confirming on the fund page before planning a purchase around it.

Watch the closing date condition. Where a tranche is restricted to subvented and subsidised units, the fund states that the unit must remain subvented or subsidised on the closing date of the application period, not merely on the day it applies. A unit whose subsidy ends inside the application window is not eligible for that tranche.

How the ceiling is set, and what a home can receive

The fund does not pay a percentage of a bill. It sets a ceiling on the total grant for one service unit, by type of service and by service capacity. For a residential care home for the elderly, including a nursing home, the ceiling turns on bed count and on when the unit commenced service, as set out in Annex 2.3 on maximum grant by type of service unit:

• A home with 50 beds or fewer: HK$450,000 where the unit commenced service before 31 March 2025, and HK$300,000 where it commenced on or after that date.
• A home with 51 to 150 beds: HK$900,000, or HK$600,000 where the unit commenced service on or after 31 March 2025.
• A home with more than 150 beds: HK$1,350,000, or HK$900,000 where the unit commenced service on or after 31 March 2025.

The additional 50 per cent, and how to keep within the ceiling

The higher figure for a unit that commenced service before 31 March 2025 already includes an additional 50 per cent of the maximum grant. That additional amount is calculated on the number of beds the home had on 31 March 2025, and if the bed count changes afterwards the calculation still uses the 31 March 2025 figure. A unit that commenced service on or after 31 March 2025 receives the lower figure for its first five years of operation, and becomes eligible for the additional 50 per cent after five years, calculated on the bed count on the day it reaches five years.

One service unit may submit several applications in the same tranche, provided the total of all the grants applied for does not exceed the ceiling that applies to it. A non-governmental organisation may also redeploy grants among its eligible subvented service units of the same service type, up to the sum of the ceilings allocated to those units, and must notify the SWD of the virement in writing on the prescribed form.

The annex is reissued as the fund changes, so read the version published on the fund page rather than a table copied into an older circular. Where the requested amount is above the ceiling, the applicant has to undertake to bear the excess from its own resources before the application is considered at all.

What the fund pays for

A fundable product has to satisfy stated principles rather than a product category. It should benefit the elderly service users or service users with disabilities of the applying unit, and its use should not impose an extra financial burden on those service users or on the Government. In practice that means a technology product that changes what care staff or carers have to do, and not a substitute for something the home would buy in any case.

Two allowances are commonly missed. The grant may also cover the cost of training staff to use the product, and the cost of warranty or maintenance, for a maximum of five years. Where the same service unit has both a subsidised and a non-subsidised portion, the fund will cover the relevant expenditure for both. Third, if the Assessment Panel asks, an approved unit must make itself available for members of the social welfare sector to visit the products the grant paid for, which is a real obligation and not a courtesy.

The fund also publishes a reference list of recognised technology application products. It is a useful starting point for a first application, and no substitute for reading the manual, because the manual, and not the list, sets the rules the application is judged against.

What the fund will not pay for

The exclusions are specific, and they are where an otherwise sensible application fails on a technicality:

• Common furniture and equipment.
• Non-technology products, and technology products that are not innovative.
• Works items, such as building alterations, fittings and installations.
• Separate applications whose only purpose is staff training, warranty or maintenance, software, system upgrading, repair, replenishment or recurrent expenses.

Two exclusions that look harsher than they are

The exclusion of training, warranty and maintenance applications does not contradict the rule that training and warranty may be included. Those costs may ride along inside a product application, for up to five years, but they cannot be the whole application. Read together, the rules say that the fund buys a capability, and lets the training and the maintenance that make it work come with it.

The other rule is duplication. The fund will not cover the same applied products as another Government fund, so anything already claimed elsewhere has to be declared rather than quietly stacked. The manual also states plainly that no supplementary grants will be given under any circumstances: an approval is a fixed amount, and a product that costs more than was approved does not get topped up.

Procurement, rental, lending and trial use: four routes

The fund has four ways to put a product into a unit, and they use different application forms. Procurement and rental are for products that already exist: the unit buys the product, or rents it, and claims the fund's share of the cost. Lending is for passing a product to an elderly person, a person with a disability or a carer for use at home. Trial use is for a newly developed product, before it is generally available.

Lending is open all year round to all subvented elderly or rehabilitation service units providing non-residential care services, such as day centres, community care services and support services. The maximum grant under each lending application is HK$200,000, subject to the availability of funding, and that amount is not counted towards the unit's ordinary ceiling. Joint applications by different organisations within the same service type are accepted. Before any product is lent, the organisation has to deploy suitable in-house professionals to assess whether the service user is suited to it and to fit the product to that person's care or rehabilitation needs, provide training and support, and set out the lending and compensation policy in its agreement with the service user. Grants for lending may also cover training, warranty or maintenance for up to five years, and administrative overhead at 5 per cent of total cost.

Trial use has a different shape again. Applications under that chapter are open all year round, and the ceiling is HK$5 million for each application. The SWD arranges a technical assessment for the Assessment Panel, the applicant has to explain how the product will benefit users, and customisation and testing have to be completed within a period shorter than one year after approval. Testing should normally begin within three months of approval, and the SWD retains 5 per cent of the approved grant until the final evaluation report is submitted. Products that are common furniture or equipment are excluded here too.

The application, the money, and the comparison with a capital purchase

An application has to contain the completed information and documents the application form lists, and it goes to the Secretariat to the I&T Fund at the SWD. Where a quotation is submitted, the quotation has to be issued to the name of the applicant organisation or service unit, the company providing it has to be registered in Hong Kong, and the price and quantity of each product component or service item has to be listed separately. The applicant organisation is also expected to have internal controls in place, since the manual devotes a chapter to procurement and stores management and another to avoiding conflicts of interest.

Once approved, the timetable is short. The organisation should procure or rent the products as soon as possible, is expected to complete the purchase of all the products within four months of approval, and has to submit the payment claim within one month after all the purchases are complete. A claim carries a claim certificate signed by the head of the organisation, the original invoices and receipts with one certified true copy, and, where the product is not fully financed by the fund, evidence that the organisation has used up its own contribution or donation first.

Three controls protect the money. Any surplus of the grant over the recognised total expenditure is clawed back and returned to the fund. The SWD may withhold further payment or claw back grants already paid where a project falls short of the requisite standard or the receipts are not acceptable. And the books of account and related records have to be kept for at least seven years after completion, release of the final payment, or the prevailing statutory period, whichever is longer, available for inspection by authorised SWD officers and the Audit Commission at any reasonable time.

It helps to read the fund as a distinct transaction with its own rules, rather than as a discount on the capital budget. The comparison below follows the fund manual.

• Who applies. The I&T Fund: the service unit or its organisation, on the prescribed form for the route it has chosen, with quotations and a procurement process behind it. An ordinary capital purchase: the home's own management, under the home's own authorisation.
• What is covered. The I&T Fund: technology products, with staff training and warranty or maintenance for up to five years, and the fund's share of a rental. An ordinary capital purchase: whatever the home's own budget and procurement rules allow.
• What the home contributes. The I&T Fund: anything above the ceiling as an undertaking given at application, plus its own contribution or donation, which has to be used up ahead of the fund's money where the product is not fully financed. An ordinary capital purchase: the whole cost.
• What is required afterwards. The I&T Fund: a claim certificate, original invoices and receipts, records kept for at least seven years, availability for inspection by the SWD and the Audit Commission, an asset register, and a visit by the sector on request. An ordinary capital purchase: the home's own accounting and audit trail.

GIES, and the sector's buying moment

The Gerontech and Innovation Expo cum Summit (GIES) is where much of this buying is decided. It is jointly organised by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, with the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation as co-organiser, and it describes itself as the largest public education event on gerontechnology in Hong Kong. It has run since 2017 and admission is free. Current dates, venues and exhibitors are published on the GIES site, and the secretariat sits with the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.

Treat the expo as reconnaissance, not as a decision. A product that is convincing on a stand has not yet been asked the two questions the application will force: what evidence shows it works in a setting like yours, and what the home pays once the funded period ends.

That second question is where a funded purchase becomes an unfunded commitment. The grant may include warranty or maintenance for up to five years. After that the home carries whatever the product needs, and a selection process that stops at the showroom price has only measured the cheap half of the cost.