The Hong Kong Productivity Council has been recognised for promoting both intelligent tunnel inspection and slowing down children's myopia progression by winning two major awards.

Organised by Hong Kong Business, the only English-language business magazine dedicated to Hong Kong and China, the Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards aim to honour technology companies who have pioneered ground-breaking IT products, and companies across different industries with the most innovative technology initiatives that made an impact to their business.

HKPC executive director Mohamed Butt said: "HKPC is delighted to continue to receive recognition from the local business community for R&D projects jointly developed with its partners to enhance work efficiency and quality of life.

"HKPC is committed to putting innovative ideas into practice and bringing long-term benefits to all walks of life and the community. These awards once again reaffirm the importance of collaboration among the Government, industry, academic and research sectors for the development of Hong Kong into an international innovation and technology hub.

"HKPC will continue to work with its partners to develop more innovative technology applications to enhance the competitiveness and productivity of the industry and contribute to a smarter and sustainable future.”

Co-developed with the Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) of the HKSAR Government and Hyder-Meinhardt Joint Venture, “Edge-AI Powered Multi-Sensor Aerial Inspector for Tunnel Surface” is Hong Kong’s first tunnel inspection system based on drone and on-board AI processing technologies.

It brings a digital upgrade to tunnel inspection, enabling professional engineers and inspectorate supervisors to conduct intelligent and safe tunnel lining inspection directly on-site. Without setting up substantive working platforms, the system helps save time significantly, reduce the space required for inspection, and enhance construction flexibility, safety and efficiency.

The system automatically generates digital defect reports for digitalisation of the entire inspection process, facilitating future asset management This system was successfully developed and has been applied in the Trunk Road T2 and Cha Kwo Ling Tunnel project (Trunk Road T2 project) managed by CEDD. This project has previously been recognised by the “2022 Special Edition of the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions” and “2022 R&D 100 Awards”.

Another of HKPC’s winning projects, “MY-O-Analyzer (My-Optical-Analyzer)”, was developed in collaboration with the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

By collecting data of the viewing habits of children and monitoring their myopia risk factors, it aims to provide a long-term, continuous, and personalised myopia monitoring solution for the ophthalmologists and market to help change children’s habits and slow down myopia progression.

With multiple sensors on the smart eyewear’s temple parts, this innovation enables automated detection of children’s viewing habits such as reading distance, lightness and darkness of the environment and head angle status. Relevant data is collected and stored in an online cloud database by mobile device via Bluetooth Low Energy.

It provides a highly efficient solution for parents and ophthalmologists to monitor children’s habits and myopia risk factors without spending a prolonged period of time of observation, allowing them to take immediate actions to address the problems. The first version of product prototype has been completed and will be commercialised in the near future. This innovation has been awarded at the “2022 Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions” and “TechConnect World Innovation Conference and Expo 2022”.

Dr Jason Yam, Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, CUHK, said: “Hong Kong has one of the highest prevalence of myopia in the world. Individuals with high myopia, i.e. more than 600 degrees, leads to irreversible and sight-threatening complications because of the excessive eyeball elongation.

"Unfortunately, during COVID-19 pandemic, the myopia incidence has a 2.5-fold increase. This is attributed to significant decrease in the outdoor time and increase in the screen time. MY-O-Analyzer, co-developed by CUHK and HKPC, monitors the outdoor time and near work, and reading posture. The data helps to predict myopia development and provide guidance and recommendation to the user on eye use. It helps to change student’s behaviour for healthy lifestyle modification.”