Many people are innovative and knowledgeable to generate new ideas with business potential. Often they just need the initial financial support to bring the ideas into reality. Thanks to the HK Tech 300 Scheme, a large-scale flagship innovation and entrepreneurship programme initiated by CityU, it becomes possible for aspiring CityU students, alumni and research staff to launch start-ups and ignite their entrepreneurship journey.
The team of ZHANG Qiaochu, a PhD student at the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences (SS) supervised by Department Head Professor Samuel HO, is among the selected teams receiving the HK Tech 300 Seed Fund of HK$100,000. Her team, which consists of five members with diverse backgrounds, proposed a novel mental health intervention for young people that adopts digital technology in the seed fund application. The idea was sparked when the team found that an increased number of young people need mental health interventions, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, but the accessibility and attractiveness of traditional conversation-based psychotherapy are relatively low. The accessibility has further reduced because of the global health crisis. In contrast, the use of game-related in psychological interventions has shown a promising prospect. However, there is no therapeutic mobile game for increasing the treatment rate of young people with anxiety and depression in Hong Kong and mainland China. Thus, the team intends to fill the gap by creating accessible and attractive evidence-based online serial mobile game with three intervention modules to help young people reduce anxiety and depression.
The team’s project will help address the limitations of the current mental health services. It integrates updated technologies and techniques, including an existing CityU intellectual property, to create a game that is attractive to customers and has great commercialisation potential. “Psychological interventions that tap into the advances in digital technology are the future trend towards increasing the accessibility and attraction of mental health services. The new psychological mobile game developed by us will help relieve children’s anxiety and depression and increase the treatment rate of young people with anxiety and depression,” Zhang says.
Moving forward, Zhang and her team will determine the value proposition of their mobile therapeutic game, identify the relevant gaming technology to create the game, as well as complete the product design and specification of the prototype. They look forward to collaborating with a gaming company to develop the initial version of the game.
At the end of the six to 12 months’ funding period, eligible teams will be recommended to compete for the HK Tech 300 Angel Fund of up to HK$1 million.
