Hong Kong healthcare

> GUERRILLA RESEARCH: going on LIHKG (local version of Reddit) to analyse public opinions

RESEARCH METHODS

Background & overview of the system

My research into health and wellbeing in Hong Kong first explored ideas of health consciousness, the healthcare system and social attitudes towards health. Although I had a lot of preliminary knowledge to work from, I found some important statistics to reafrm my knowledge scope. Looking at key trends in digital health, I found that the majority of individuals in Hong Kong were already fairly “health conscious” pre-pandemic.

Hong Kong’s healthcare system works as a hybrid model where it is simultaneously private and public. Inspired by the NHS, public healthcare is mostly free, if not at an afordably low rate, although it comes at the cost of extremely long wait times. Eye surgery has an average wait time of 30 months. Seeing a public gynaecologist meant a wait time of half a year. On the other hand, private healthcare is one of the most expensive in the world, although it is sold with comfort and quality. Accessibility was therefore a very clear problem identified from the start, from the perspectives of queue and cost.

Since private healthcare is so expensive, 34% of Hong Kong's population are already private health insurance owners. About half of this group recorded wanting to buy new insurance on top of their existing insurance, and more than half wanting to change plans for better coverage. These statistics validate the concerns shared amongst the health-conscious individuals of Hong Kong and their willingness to be resilient in face of possible health problems in the foreseeable future.