Source: China News Network
Technology to help the elderly enjoy a healthy life in their later years is becoming a topic and field that more and more people are concerned about. How can technology products make the elderly use, affordable, and well-used, and form an organic synergy with the elderly care service, cross the valley of innovation faster, form a large-scale market application, and truly benefit the elderly?
On May 20, the "Silver Technology Partnership Program", which focuses on innovative solutions for smart elderly care, was officially launched, openly looking for co-creation partners to the public, soliciting technology products and services focusing on community and home-based elderly care scenarios, using Tencent's AI technology, digital connectivity capabilities and elderly care ecological resources, matching public welfare catalytic funds, deeply supporting innovative projects in the silver hair industry, and helping the intelligent development of the silver hair industry.
This plan is jointly initiated by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the China Foundation for the Development of Aging and the Tencent SSV Silver Technology Lab, supported by the Social Value Investment Alliance (Shenzhen), and linked with many ecological partners such as industry, academia and research, aiming to advocate social innovation forces to pay attention to the issue of aging, accompany the co-creation partners to accelerate innovation breakthroughs and grow together in the way of science and technology assistance, ecological connection and public welfare catalysis, and jointly create a benchmark for the application and implementation of silver science and technology innovation, so as to achieve scale as soon as possible. So as to help more elderly people enjoy high-quality smart pension technology products and services.
In the first phase of 2024, 15 high-potential projects and 3 high-quality projects will be selected to share millions of catalytic funds, AI technology and ecological resource support.
Poster of the Silver Technology Partnership Program
Focus on smart solutions for the elderly in community home scenarios
On January 15 this year, the State Council Office issued the "Opinions on Developing the Silver Economy and Improving the Well-being of the Elderly". This is the first policy document named after the "silver economy" in mainland China, and is known as the "first year" of the development of the silver economy.
The "Silver Technology Partnership Program" was launched in response to the country's policy guidance of vigorously supporting the development of the silver economy.
It is understood that the "Silver Technology Partner Program" will focus on smart solutions for the elderly in the community and home scenarios, focusing on the four "care" needs of the silver-haired population and caregivers - safety "care", health care, home care "care", and emotional companionship "care", and solicit smart products and digital solutions.
The projects participating in the declaration need to meet the requirements of being able to effectively solve the problem of elderly care, effectively integrating digital technology, suitable for the elderly, easy to use, and cost-effective, so that the elderly can truly use, afford, and use well. A jury composed of experts in the field of silver hair and technological innovation will evaluate all submitted projects from multiple perspectives such as feasibility, innovation, sustainability, social value, and development potential.
The Silver Tech Partnership Program focuses on the four "care" needs of the silver-haired population and their caregivers
With the official launch of the "Silver Technology Partnership Program", its official website (https://ssv.tencent.com/ElderlytechPartner) was also officially launched on May 20, and the online solicitation entrance was opened.
As can be seen from the information on the official website, the "Silver Technology Partnership Program" will continue in two phases:
From May to August 2024, the "Silver Technology Partnership Program" will conduct a preliminary and re-evaluation of all submitted project proposals, and identify 15 high-potential projects with development potential.
From September to December 2024, the "Silver Tech Partnership Program" will evaluate the 3 finalists from 15 high-potential projects through customized offline empowerment workshops and roadshows, and continue to co-create.
"Under the social background that the country attaches great importance to the development of the aging industry and vigorously develops the silver economy, the new generation of silver-haired people is facing the practical problems of high-quality demand iteration and increased burden of home care for the elderly." Liu Gaofeng, Deputy Director of the Institute of Industry and Planning of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, pointed out that the "Silver Technology Partnership Program" is an important measure to promote the high-quality development of the silver economy and digital technology for the elderly.
In Liu Gaofeng's view, the development process of the silver hair industry needs to pay attention to understand and grasp the practical difficulties faced by the elderly and their thoughts and expectations, which is the basis for promoting the development of digital technology for the elderly; At the same time, it is necessary to ensure the balance, accessibility and safety of age-appropriate products and services, so as to truly make the results of age-appropriate shine.
"AI + digital technology + ecological resources" helps the silver hair industry become intelligent"The original intention of the 'Silver Technology Partnership Program' is to build an innovative mechanism and open platform for the broad participation of all sectors of society and technology to help the elderly, and to find partners who can work with us to jointly explore technology, inclusive and sustainable smart products and solutions for the elderly, and create an open ecology of the silver technology industry." Dou Ruigang, head of Tencent's SSV Silver Technology Lab, said.
Since its establishment in April 2021, Tencent SSV Silver Technology Lab has integrated Tencent's internal AI and digital capabilities, and through a co-creation model, it has jointly developed a variety of smart elderly care technology products such as invisible caregivers, silver age guardian cards, Ethereal inside hearing aids, and assisted lifts Holistic solutions and digital intervention programs for hearing health for silver hair.
Dou Ruigang introduced that in the past three years, Tencent SSV Silver Technology Lab has been exploring how to better integrate "AI + digitalization" with hardware products and elderly care services, and has accumulated a certain amount of experience and relatively mature technical solution capabilities, "We hope that through the 'Silver Technology Partner Program', these capabilities, experience and technologies will be shared openly and together, and we will work together to create better smart products and services for the elderly."
In terms of AI technology, the "Silver Technology Partner Program" has received support from technical teams such as Tencent Cloud Intelligence, Tencent Tian Lai Lab, Tencent Hybrid Model, and Tencent IEG Quality Management Department's virtual and real interaction team, and can provide a full range of services such as AI computing power, AI development, AI product solutions, and digital and intelligent transformation methods for the projects selected for the "Silver Technology Partner Program", such as speech recognition (ASR), speech synthesis (TTS), voice replication and other AI technologies required for voice interaction. AI algorithm and firmware support for hearing aids, helpword detection technology, Chinese creation ability under large language model, logical reasoning ability in complex contexts, visual motion capture technology, cloud real-time rendering and virtual reality interaction ability, etc.
In terms of digital connectivity capabilities, the selected projects of the "Silver Technology Partnership Program" will have priority access to the digital connectivity tool "Silver Interconnection" co-ordinated by Tencent SSV Silver Technology Lab, based on Tencent's connected Internet of Things platform, to realize the interconnection between people and things and things at low cost, and reduce the digital investment of co-creation partners through product development support, integration of Tencent's superior technology and content, and access to technical services such as audio and video interaction with WeChat and APP. Together with co-creation partners, we will gradually build an inclusive digital and intelligent ecosystem for silver hair, bringing higher social and commercial value to our products.
In addition, the "Silver Technology Partnership Program" will also provide the selected projects with shared resources for the silver ecosystem, such as product design, policy consulting, brand cooperation, exhibition exposure, and investment introduction, so as to promote the common growth and benchmarking of the projects.
Co-creating an age-friendly digital and inclusive society
In recent years, the aging process of the mainland's population has been accelerating. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2023, the number of people over the age of 60 in the mainland has increased to 297 million, accounting for 21.1%, which means that the mainland has officially entered a moderately aging society.
The huge elderly group of nearly 300 million has given birth to a huge market for the silver economy. At present, the scale of the mainland's silver economy is about 7 trillion yuan, accounting for about 6% of GDP. By 2035, the scale of the silver economy is expected to reach about 30 trillion yuan, accounting for about 10% of GDP.
Although the silver hair industry is a new "blue ocean" with great potential, and the development of the silver economy is an important measure to actively respond to the aging of the population and promote high-quality development, at present, the silver industry in mainland China is also facing a series of practical problems and challenges.
"In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the level of social and economic development in the mainland and the vigorous advocacy of national policies, the silver economy in the mainland has developed rapidly, but there are still few types and quantities of silver products, uneven quality, and insufficient scientific and technological and intelligent applications." Yu Jianwei, chairman of the China Aging Development Foundation, pointed out.
Yu Jianwei hopes that through the launch of the "Silver Technology Partnership Program", more high-tech enterprises can be attracted to pay attention to the field of aging, improve the intelligent and intelligent level of elderly health services, promote the transformation and high-quality development of the silver economy, and solve the current pain points and difficulties faced by elderly care services.
Ma Weihua, Chairman of the Social Value Investment Alliance (Shenzhen), said that the traditional silver industry has a long investment cycle, which leads to low enthusiasm for social capital investment, which is one of the important factors restricting the development of the silver hair industry. ”