SeniorDeli Applies for HK$1.8M HKEX Impact Fund to Scale AI Care Food Adoption

SeniorDeli Applies for HK$1.8M HKEX Impact Fund to Scale AI Care Food Adoption

SeniorDeli (Carewells Limited) has submitted a grant application to the HKEX Impact Fund seeking HK$1.8 million to develop and deploy an AI-powered multilingual 照護食 (care food) Adoption Assistant targeting Hong Kong's care home sector.

About the HKEX Impact Fund

The HKEX Impact Fund is administered by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) as part of its environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitment. The fund supports social enterprises and NGOs working on high-impact projects addressing critical community needs in Hong Kong. SeniorDeli is applying under the Health and Wellbeing category.

Our Application Narrative

The core argument of our application is that there is a measurable, addressable gap in dysphagia care quality in Hong Kong's care homes — and that AI-guided product adoption represents the most scalable intervention to close it.

Hong Kong has over 900 licensed Residential Care Homes for the Elderly (RCHEs), serving approximately 70,000 residents. Our HK Care Food Adoption Index 2026 shows that only 34% of RCHEs are fully IDDSI-compliant. The primary barriers — knowledge, training, and awareness — are exactly the problems that conversational AI is well-positioned to solve.

The AI 照護食 Adoption Assistant

The proposed AI system is a multilingual conversational assistant (English / Cantonese / Tagalog) that guides Foreign Domestic Helpers (FDHs) and care staff through IDDSI texture-modification protocols in real time. Key capabilities include:

Product selection guidance: Given a resident's dysphagia level and meal plan, the assistant recommends the appropriate SeniorDeli products and preparation methods.

Step-by-step preparation: Visual and text guides for preparing IDDSI-compliant meals, optimised for kitchen staff with limited clinical training.

Compliance tracking: Integration with care home management systems to track resident-level compliance and flag at-risk cases.

Training modules: Short, gamified training sequences for FDHs covering dysphagia basics, IDDSI levels, and safe food preparation — available in Tagalog and Indonesian.

Target Impact: 200 to 500 Care Homes in 3 Years

The HKEX application targets deployment to 200 additional care homes within 12 months of funding, scaling to 500 care homes within 3 years. This would move Hong Kong's RCHE IDDSI compliance rate from 34% to over 70%.

LinguaLeap Integration

A secondary component of the application involves integrating the Adoption Assistant with LinguaLeap — Carewells' AI swallowing assessment device currently in clinical validation. LinguaLeap provides objective dysphagia severity scoring that feeds directly into the Adoption Assistant's product recommendations, creating a closed loop between assessment and nutrition management.

For more information about our HKEX Impact Fund application, contact info@seniordeli.com or visit the /hkex page on this website.