Smart Playing Blocks

Worldwide, around 55 million people have dementia, according to the WHO. As older populations increase in nearly every country, this number is expected to rise to 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050. This has far reaching social and economic consequences that affect their loved ones and the community at large. 

Our solution is a cognitive training product that aims to improve mental acuity in the elderly and increase their potential to lead happy and fulfilling lives into old age. It features a unique integration of software and hardware, which offers an engaging user experience. The smart playing blocks are connected via BlueTooth to a mobile application. 

The interactive game modes that are designed to train key skills such as hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, memory, logical thinking, word recognition, etc. By making it fun and engaging, we hope to encourage the users to play regularly, so that they can reap the long term benefits. Each of the game modes advances based on difficulty as the player progresses, in order to maintain the challenging and fun nature of the games. Other than the base game modes, we also work with organisations to create customised game modes, in order to create solutions that best serve the end users. 

Our solution aims to serve the elderly, in particular those who have developed or are at risk of developing cognitive conditions such as dementia. Our solution will also indirectly support their caregivers and family members, by equipping them with a tool through which they can interact and engage with the elderly in a meaningful and positive way. In the future, we foresee that our solution could also potentially be used by a wider segment of the population as a preventative tool or a rehabilitation tool. 

We have undergone extensive user validation by working closely with care homes, NGOs, community organisations and universities. We have collected feedback from end users in a range of different contexts and iterated upon their feedback, so we are confident that we have create a product that serves them well. We have formed relationships with various organisations that are eager to help us with the promotion and continuous development of our product. 

We have reached 300+ end users with our product through a series of pilot trials, gathering valuable feedback in the process.

We are hoping to get advice and guidance as we embark on this next stage of development, which involves increasing our scale and reaching more end users. We also hope to launch pilot trials in other regions, in order to explore the viability of our product in new markets. 

In order to create a unique and engaging user experience, we developed a gameplay system that is built upon a patent-pending integration of software and hardware. The user gets the tactile experience of holding the playing blocks, which our users have told us is a key factor that attracts them to our solution. 

We also work with partner organisations to design and create their own customised game modes, that are built upon the infrastructure of our gameplay system. This enables them to create bespoke options that best serve their needs.  

We believe that the elderly market is often underserved, especially by technology solutions. We hope to be part of the change and provide a tool that improves their daily lives. We hope to infuse some fun into their daily lives and help them maintain good cognitive health into old age. 

Within the next year, we hope to: 

- Reach out to new partner organisations and strengthen ties with our existing partnerships

- Invest in production, in order to increase the scale and decrease the unit cost, making our product more affordable

- Launch pilot trials in new regions, including Japan and Singapore

- Continue gathering more to feedback from users 

Within the next five years, we hope to: 

- Have a sustainable business model that will allow us to run smoothly, with the ability to subsidise our products for low-income individuals in need

- Increase the reach of our product, to have a bigger impact on users across different countries

- Work with healthcare or insurance organisations to increase adoption of our products

- Decreasing indicators of mental slowness or decline in the elderly

- Increasing indicators of happiness and positive emotions in the elderly

By equipping the elderly with an engaging tool that positively impacts their cognitive skills, we hope that over time they will have the incentive to consistently engage with our solution. Based on interviews during our pilot trial, we have found that a majority of the users experience an increasing in positive and uplifting emotions from interacting with our solution. We hope that these positive emotions can translate into long-term mental health and wellness, which will enable them to continue to meaningfully engage with their communities and their loved ones. 

Research shows that cognitively stimulating activities such as reading, writing and playing games could delay the onset of Alzheimer’s by 5 years. (Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago). We hope that our solution can offer a customised option for the users, which will translate into improved cognitive sharpness and ability over time. As users gain confidence in their improving abilities, this will enable them to feel more capable and less reliant on those around them for their daily activities. 

We have created a set of 4 blocks, each with a small screen that displays various letters and images. These blocks are connected via BlueTooth to a mobile application, where the user can choose between game modes and keep track of their progress over time. We designed our games to gradually increase in difficulty over time, to keep the users challenged and stimulated. 

As we prepare to test our product in new regions, we are adapting to the local context by observing and interacting with potential users. This includes developing some understanding of their culture and language, in order to ensure that our solution can best serve them. In the user testing phases, we also make sure to include respondents from a range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, as well as keeping in mind differences in education level and abilities, in order to create a solution that can serve the needs of different individuals. 

At the moment, we are mainly focusing on the B2B channel. We find that it is beneficial for us to collaborate with partner organisations that have experience and a deep understanding of the people that they serve on a daily basis, in order to co-develop a solution that best serves their needs. 

By working alongside our partner organisations, the ultimate beneficiaries are the elderly that they work with, as well as their caretakers and family members. 

Our revenue is reinvested back into the development of the product, as we are continuously coming up with new game modes and refining old ones, in order to widen our library of supported game modes that target different needs and serve different groups. 

Our plan for financial sustainability is a combination of selling products/services, grants, contracts with private and public organisations, and raising investment capital. 

In the expansion phases, we will rely more heavily on grants and investments. After investing in production, we will be able to reduce our unit cost, which will result in a more affordable price for our customers. 

In the long term, we will sell our product and offer customisation services, as well as signing contracts with private and public organisations. 

In order to kickstart our project, we received grants from Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks (around 100K USD).