When I joined the Sau Po Centre on Ageing, I stepped into completely unfamiliar territory — no social science training, no prior experience in community care, and a mindset built entirely in the commercial IT world. Moving into ageing research required a profound shift in how I approach technology and design.
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Here are three mindset shifts I experienced while building the IT platform for the JC Stand-by U project.
Shift 1: From “Users” to “Families”
In commercial IT, “users” are metrics on a dashboard. But here, I quickly learned that behind every database record is a caregiver, an older adult, and a family navigating stress. Designing our case management system meant realizing we aren’t just storing data—we are mapping out the real-life support journey of vulnerable people.
Shift 2: From “Single Client” to “Ecosystem Design”
In a typical commercial project, you design a system for one company with one set of rules. Here, our team do not provide the respite services directly—our partnering NGOs do. That means a rigid, one-size-fits-all system wouldn’t work. I had to shift from designing for a “single client” to designing an ecosystem that respects the unique workflows of different NGOs, while still keeping the platform coherent enough for our project.
Shift 3: “Project Delivery” to “Workflow Efficiency”
In my past roles, a successful deployment meant launching on time and staying within budget. Today, success is measured by the hours saved for both operations and research. For frontline workers, a “win” is a streamlined system that cuts data entry time in half—giving them back precious hours to spend directly supporting families instead of doing admin work. For our researchers, the impact is just as massive. Before this system, there was no structural way to verify data accuracy, and a single wrong input could result in hours wasted on data cleansing. Now, our structured system ensures only clean, correct data is collected. Because both the NGOs and the project team share this centralized platform, information flows effectively, drastically reducing back-and-forth communication time.
Looking Ahead: The Promise of GenAI
As we look to the future, I am particularly excited about the potential of Generative AI in the ageing and community care sector. One of the biggest hurdles we face is the technology barrier—many older adults have low digital literacy or resist using complex smart devices. GenAI’s ability to understand and process natural language offers a powerful way to bypass these traditional interfaces. By allowing older adults to interact with systems simply by talking, we can make digital support more accessible, and human-centric than ever before.
By: Peter Tsang, IT Manager
Email: peterthf@hku.hk