Integration of Western and Chinese Medical Theories to Improve Service Mobility

Statistics show that by 2030, the elderly would comprise nearly one fourth of the entire population, thus worsening the severity of the ageing problem. A well-developed elderly healthcare service is no doubt an important task, but to address the problem to its root would require health education to the public and the elderly. Being the winner of the Hong Kong Information and Communications Technology Award 2008, the PolyU-Henry G. Leong Mobile Integrative Health Centre (Health Centre), designed and implemented by the Centre for Integrative Digital Health, School of Nursing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, offers mobile healthcare services to promote preventive health care to the elderly. Since 2007, the Health Centre aims at enabling the needy elderly to attain a healthy lifestyle so that their daily lives are enjoyable and fruitful through achieving the tenets harmony and equilibrium of body, mind and soul.

The Health Centre is housed in a mobile vehicle to provide a series of brand-new integrative healthcare services.

Mobile Primary Healthcare Tool for the Elderly
Arousing the Public's Consciousness on Health

Professor Joanne CHUNG of the School of Nursing of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University said that the Health Centre would spread the message to the general public of caring for the elderly and promote the awareness of preventive health care. Integrating Western medicine and technology with traditional Chinese medical theory and approaches in preserving good health, the Health Centre is housed in a vehicle to provide a series of brand-new integrative healthcare services. This allows the elderly to have free health checks with the computers on the vehicle, and creates lifelong health records for them.

In order to have the vehicle stopping at different districts to offer mobile healthcare services to local communities would require coordination among several units. According to Prof. CHUNG, the coordination unit does more than promoting preventive healthcare to the elderly through different districts, operations and promotions. "In the future, we will extend the healthcare service to individual communities, such as providing similar services in the community centres of the public estates, to further arouse public awareness on health", said CHUNG.