Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)

Hong Kong police are planning to provide households in need with smart positioning devices to help locate family members with dementia. A trial of the devices found that they helped reduce missing person reports.

“Getting lost can be dangerous for the elderly or those who are mentally incapacitated, and causes stress for their carers,” police chief Raymond Siu Chak-yee said.

“Police hope that the project can lower the risk of getting lost for those with dementia [and] at the same time relieve the stress of their carers.”

Since the launch of Project Pinpoint in 2022, 555 Bluetooth tracking devices have been distributed for free to families in Kowloon East. The police plan to launch this initiative across the city.

The devices need to be paired with smartphones. They help carers track the vulnerable person’s location in real time.

Out of 74 times when people got lost, the police force said 34 of them were found using the tracking device. The average time it took to find them with the device was one hour.

The police did not announce a timeline for making the project citywide. But they said that the project could extend to other groups who might require the service, such as children with special educational needs.

Quiz time

1. What is the citywide initiative Hong Kong police are planning to launch?

2. When was Project Pinpoint launched?

3. What do they devices have to be paired with for carers to track the person’s location?

4. What was the average search time to find the person with the help of the device?

5. Who is the tracking device service likely to be extended to?

Suggested answers

1. They will give smart positioning devices to households with dementia patients in order to help them find their family members.

2. 2022

3. smartphones

4. one hour

5. children with special educational needs