Medical innovation may not be the first prognosis that comes to mind regarding financial hub Hong Kong’s future. But last week, the city comfortably took the spotlight hosting professionals, policymakers and investors from around the world for International Healthcare Week. The Asia Summit on Global Health and the Hospital Authority Convention, held concurrently with the Hong Kong International Medical and Healthcare Fair, were important catalysts for developing the sector. The two-day summit was organised by the government and Trade Development Council and featured more than 90 speakers from 15 countries. The city’s leader and health chief told delegates that Hong Kong is prepared to leverage its “unrivalled” status as a medical innovation hub.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said the city’s strengths are magnified by its core position in the Greater Bay Area. In pursuit of medical innovation, Lee said, Hong Kong “complements the strategies set out in the national 15th five-year plan”. Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau highlighted the city’s unique role in strengthening global pandemic preparedness and response, as the world monitors a deadly hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius.

Lo said the Covid-19 pandemic carried a “sobering lesson” about how no health system, however advanced, can stand alone against a pandemic. He said that when the next pandemic emerges, “collective survival will depend not on walls, but on bridges”. Hong Kong has strengthened its preparedness, including by setting up an emerging disease research fund to translate insights into real-world strategies.

Hong Kong’s efforts to improve care for its residents were also explored during the three-day Hospital Authority conference, which drew more than 9,000 local, mainland and overseas healthcare professionals and academics.

Authority chief executive Libby Lee Ha-yun said Hong Kong’s first five-year plan for 2026 to 2030 includes measures to streamline services to avoid competing clinical demands, scale up specialised centres and deploy AI-assisted diagnostics to support radiologists.

Such projects are to be welcomed in a city where the healthcare system has been praised for quality, yet a cause of great concern is that it may be overburdened by an ageing society and staff shortages.