Special kids get an early break

Runner-up Canpanion uses artificial intelligence to identify children with special education needs more quickly and cheaply, and help them get the right intervention early in life.

Special education needs or SEN children are those who have difficulties in learning due to physical and mental disabilities.

While the number of SEN students in Hong Kong has doubled in the last decade to nearly 60,000, getting subsidized pre-school rehabilitation services is not easy.

Parents need to wait six to 12 months for a funded SEN assessment, while the average waiting time at specialized child care centres is around 19 months.

Assessments by private institutes, meanwhile, can cost HK$6,000 to HK$8,000, and this does not include expenses for follow-up treatment.

Christine Tsui Yuen-ting and Queenie Ng Yuen-ying founded Canpanion in 2023 to help alleviate the shortage of resources for SEN children and developed an online gamified assessment that can identify autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and specific learning difficulties.

To be launched next month, Canpanion's assessment costs HK$2,000 per child, and is at least 67 percent cheaper what private organizations charge for such assessments.

Tsui says that the AI-empowered assessment platform has won favorable reviews in trial runs at partner schools, as it helped educators complete reports quickly and enabled them to spend more time with their students.

Canpanion will also offer add-on services including toy and tool recommendations, guidance videos, online teaching materials and parenting classes, to build a one-stop platform for early identification and intervention.

Canpanion currently has 35 partners including schools, non-governmental organizations, advisors, therapists and education centres.

It also offers its services to able-bodied children up to the age of 12, with the aim of ushering in a new era of standard education for all children, and hopes to expand into the mainland and overseas in the next five years.