HKSTP’s Incubatees and Partner Companies Score Big at Hong Kong ICT Awards 2018

(Hong Kong, 4 April 2018) - Hong Kong Science and Technology Park’s (HKSTP) incubatees and partner companies collected a total of 31 awards at the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2018, including the Award of the Year, the ICT Startup Grand Award, the Smart Living Grand Award, the Smart Business Grand Award and nine Gold Awards in different categories.

Belun Technology Company Limited, an HKSTP incubatee, shone at the award presentation ceremony winning five awards, namely the ICT Startup Grand Award, the Smart Living Grand Award, the ICT Startup (Hardware & Devices) Gold Award, Smart Living (Smart Healthcare) Gold Award and the overall grand prize, the Award of the Year. Their invention, the Belun™ Ring, is the world’s first medical-grade ring that users put on their fingers to help with pre-screening for obstructive sleep apnea and tracking of overnight mental stress.

“Belun is at the frontier of helping people to monitor and manage their health at home. We believe that if people can actively screen themselves in the comfort of their own homes with lightweight, medically certified and most importantly, accurate home screening tools, it will build the foundation for better preventive healthcare and chronic disease management,” said Dr Lydia Leung, CEO of Belun Technology. “HKSTP provided one of the best R&D environments for us to work in and test our prototypes, to make sure our Belun Ring solution is of medical-grade quality. On top of this, they also provided support and advice on how to start and grow our business. We thank all the engineers, researchers and business consultants at HKSTP who helped turn our idea into a commercial reality.”

Another HKSTP incubatee, Fano Labs Limited, received the Smart Business Grand Award and the Smart Business (Solution for Business and Public Sector Enterprise) Gold Award for their customer services product. Fano Labs develops Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based speech recognition, natural language processing and big data solutions to improve customer services.

“There are literally hundreds of Chinese dialects spoken by Chinese people on the mainland and around the world. Those in the service industry, especially those in the public sector, may find dealing with customers a massive challenge because of this. Customers gain a much better experience if they can speak with customer service executives in their own dialects,” said Dr Miles Wen, CEO and Founder of Fano Labs. “Our speech recognition and natural language processing solutions are based on AI and HKSTP has the community and infrastructure dedicated to the technology. With its full support, we managed to accelerate our R&D and commercialise our solutions.”

HKSTP is proud to witness the growth and successes of its incubatees and partner companies. Albert Wong, Chief Executive Officer of HKSTP, said: “The awards received by our incubatees and partner companies are testament to the creativity, courage and fortitude shown by the people involved in turning their great ideas into reality. These innovative solutions benefit us all and help make Hong Kong a smarter city.” 

“The top award received by Belun Technology and the other 13 awards won by our incubatees in the ICT Startup category also tell us that we have the ability and the talent to make innovative technologies our competitive advantage and grow the innovation and technology (I&T) sector for Hong Kong. We’ve made Science Park into a successful living lab, where our incubatees can research, develop and validate their products at an accelerated pace. We strive to drive the continuous development of a vibrant I&T ecosystem, and we hope to see these winners expand their footprints in both the local and global marketplace,” Wong added.

Highlights of the winning innovations:

• Belun Technology Company Limited – Award of the Year, ICT Startup Grand Award, Smart Living Grand Award, ICT Startup (Hardware & Devices) Gold Award and Smart Living (Smart Healthcare) Gold Award 
  Belun Technology was formed by a group of local experts in compact sensing, biomedical signal processing and AI-based algorithms for pre-screening, management and risk analysis of chronic diseases including sleep health, respiratory, psychiatry and cardiovascular diseases.The Belun™ Ring measures overnight beat-to-beat pulse oximetry, heart rate, heart rate variation, mental stress and motion during one’s sleep, providing a comprehensive sleep report that assesses one’s sleep quality and risk of having sleep apnea.
• Fano Labs Limited - Smart Business Grand Award, Smart Business (Solution for Business and Public 
  Sector Enterprise) Gold Award 
  The company’s Multilingual Artificial Intelligence Customer Service (AICS) System can speak and understand English, Cantonese, Mandarin and certain extent of mixed languages. Also, it can analyse all recorded phone calls in enterprises call centers to provide managers with valuable business insights with quality assurance. Its AI Customer Service System can tirelessly serve thousands of customers at the same time 24/7, speaks multiple languages and more importantly, perform the tasks with a lower cost.
• Imsight Medical Technology Co. Ltd. – ICT Startup (Software & Apps) Gold Award 
  The company proposes a novel framework with 3D conventional networks for automated detection of pulmonary nodules from low-dose CT scans called LungSight. The framework consists of two stages: 1) candidate screening, and 2) false positive reduction. The detection process takes less than one minute with over 90% sensitivity. LungSight can support radiologists by reducing their workload, maintaining lower misdiagnosis rates and diagnosis costs, eventually saving patients’ lives.
• GemVCare Ltd. – ICT Startup (Social Impact) Gold Award 
  GemVCare is a genetic testing company specialising in diabetes. The company develops solutions to assess the risk of diabetes (DForesee™) and its complications (DProtect™) before they occur by detecting patented genetic markers (high-risk signals found in cells and present since birth) and other modifiable risk factors. The solutions were developed based on decades of university research and validated in over 10,000 clinical cases in Asia.
• Computime Limited – Smart Living (Smart Home) Gold Award 
  Computime’s Smart Comfort System is an IoT (Internet of Things) solution that focuses on home comfort. It controls the heating or cooling systems in homes to ensure a comfortable temperature for residents. It helps reduce energy consumption by heating or cooling specific rooms as and when necessary. The System is compatible with almost all the current brands in the market, and has the flexibility to complement other smart home devices. The intuitive app has voice control capabilities, and homeowners can set rules in how various home devices work with each other.
• Pokeguide Ltd. – Smart Mobility (Smart Tourism) Gold Award 
  Pokeguide helps users find their way easily in the intricate subway system in Hong Kong and other cities in the world. Users can simply key in a building name or an address, and Pokeguide will tell them where to board the train, guide them inside the station with virtual reality content, and show them how to get to their destination from the nearest subway exit. Supported by machine learning algorithm, the mobile app also provides information on restaurants, shops and activities near user’s destination.
• freeD Group Limited – Smart Mobility (Smart Tourism) Gold Award 
  freeD’s TravelFlan is a one-stop travel platform which provides travellers with a personalised travel experience with the use of AI Chatbot Technology. The AI Travel Concierge service is available to all travellers via popular instant messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and WeChat. Users can enjoy a variety of customized travel services including itinerary planning, restaurant booking, transportation guides and instant translation without the need to download additional apps.
• ASTRI and its partner Smart Secure ID Hong Kong Limited – Smart Business (Information Security) Gold Award 
  The Biometric Access Control System, equipped with a Palm Fusion Biometric Sensing Device, is a biometric authentication method based on the unique patterns and various characteristics in the palms of people’s hands. The solution can capture a person’s palm vein and palm print patterns at the same time while sensing the presence of a palm placed on the device through infrared and visible light, offering a higher level of security to ensure information, property and even personal safety.

Steered by the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer and organised by 10 Hong Kong ICT industry associations and professional bodies, the annual Hong Kong ICT Awards recognises and promotes outstanding information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and applications designed and developed in Hong Kong.

Please refer to the Appendix for the full list of awards received by HKSTP partner companies and incubates.