Fostering Cross-Sector Collaboration to Create New Opportunities for Hong Kong’s Film and Music Industries

HONG KONG, Sept. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The Microfilm Production Support Scheme (Music) (“Support Scheme”), organized by the Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing (“AIM”) and sponsored by the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (“CCIDA”), marks its thirteenth year. The Support Scheme continues to unite outstanding local talent in advertising and music to produce 32 original microfilms. It aims to nurture emerging creatives across music, digital advertising, and microfilm production, while encouraging more singers to take part in on-screen performances and advancing the development of Hong Kong’s creative industries in a richer and more diverse direction.

AIM hosts the 13^th Support Scheme Matching cum Kick-Off Ceremony at the InnoCentre, Kowloon Tong. Mrs. Lowell CHO, Acting Commissioner for Cultural and Creative Industries, officiates as Guest of Honor, joined by Mr. Francis FONG, Chairman of AIM, to mark the official launch of this year’s edition.

As in previous years, the Support Scheme comprises two tiers: Tier 1 “Advertising Production Start-ups” and Tier 2 “Small Advertising Production Enterprises.” At the ceremony, Tier 1 teams are paired with singers through a drawing of lots, forming 22 creative partnerships. Tier 2 features ten self-formed teams, each comprising a director, scriptwriter, singer, and production company, making their debut at the event.

Each Tier 1 team receives up to HK$130,000 to produce a 4 to 8-minute original microfilm with their matched singer. Tier 2 teams are granted up to HK$240,000 to produce a 12-to-16-minute microfilm with their self-paired singer. The Support Scheme also provides comprehensive training covering scriptwriting, directing, production, and post-production. In addition, a mentoring team of industry experts provides professional guidance to help enhance the quality of the microfilms.

To further support the participating teams, AIM promotes the 32 microfilms through multiple channels, including the Hong Kong International Film and TV Market (FILMART) 2026, television, online platforms, social media, and the Support Scheme’s official website.

To recognize outstanding works, the following awards are presented: “Best Microfilm Production Award,” “Best Microfilm Actor Award,” and “Best Microfilm Actress Award” (each with Gold, Silver, and Bronze distinctions), as well as “Best Microfilm Scriptwriting Award,” “Best Microfilm Cinematography Award,” and “Best Microfilm Art Direction Award.” Winners will be selected by professional judges, while the “Most Popular Microfilm Award” will be determined by public voting. Exceptional teams may also be recommended for international microfilm or short film competitions, further enhancing their exposure and commercial prospects.

The Support Scheme continues to serve as a vital platform for nurturing creative talent and fostering collaboration across Hong Kong’s film and music sectors.

The advertising production companies, directors, and singers participating in the two tiers of the 13^th Support Scheme are listed as below:

Tier 1 “Advertising Production Start-ups”

(in alphabetical order of the “Advertising Production Start-ups” company names)

Tier 2 “Small Advertising Production Enterprises”

(in alphabetical order of the “Small Advertising Production Enterprises” company names)

After the Kick-Off Ceremony, the selected production teams will begin creating their microfilms. These microfilms will be released online in January 2026 and will be showcased at the FILMART 2026, where they will meet with industry professionals and audiences.

For more details about the Support Scheme, please visit: http://www.microfilm-music.hk 

Organizer: Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing (AIM)

Lead Sponsor: Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Disclaimer: The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region provides funding support to the project only, and does not otherwise take part in the project. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials/events (or by members of the project team) are those of the project organizers only and do not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, Create Hong Kong, the CreateSmart Initiative Secretariat or the CreateSmart Initiative Vetting Committee.

BEIJING, Sept. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Driven by both policy guidance and market forces, China’s silver economy is rapidly developing, creating vast opportunities. The silver market has shown new progress, including sustained vitality of main entities, continued boom in key areas, the prominent role of consumption in driving investment, and accelerated advancement of industrial integration and regional coordination.

China’s silver economy is entering a new stage of development. A new development pattern is emerging – marked by consumption upgrades, technological empowerment, industry-finance integration, and regional coordination. The silver economy has evolved from a concept to action, becoming an important action in national strategies such as actively responding to population aging, expanding domestic demand, and achieving high-quality development.

With moderate growth in per capita consumption, the scale of China’s silver economy is expected to reach 19.1 trillion yuan ($2.68 trillion) by 2035, accounting for 27.8 percent of total consumption, according to the Fudan Institute on Aging.

In recent years, with the support of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the elderly care industry has become increasingly intelligent and digitalized, with smart elderly care emerging as a new growth track in the silver economy. As technological innovation continues to expand, application scenarios for smart elderly care are becoming increasingly diverse. Intelligent nursing robots, smart wearable devices, and personal health management systems are helping older adults better enjoy a smarter lifestyle.

Powered by modern technologies such as the internet, big data, and AI, smart elderly care models now provide seniors and institutions with real-time, efficient, and low-cost services. Looking ahead, the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of the elderly care industry are expected to bring new growth points to economic development and give rise to new fields and new tracks.

According to the 55th Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development released by the China Internet Network Information Center, as of December 2024, internet users aged 50 and above accounted for 34.1 percent of the total, up from 32.5 percent a year earlier. The internet continues to penetrate deeper into middle-aged and elderly groups.

The silver generation has shown strong adaptability to the internet and enthusiasm for digital life. Their online habits are comparable to those of younger groups. Online shopping, web browsing, mobile payments, and video streaming have become daily routines, enriching their lifestyles with diverse experiences.

Since 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has launched nationwide pilot projects for smart health and elderly care, focusing on building platforms, resource integration, database utilization, terminal convergence, and smart devices. Such pilots have spurred breakthroughs and accelerated the industry’s development.

Take healthcare as an example. China is strengthening digital and intelligent services in local healthcare, promoting telemedicine, and expanding online medical care. E-commerce platforms are also actively entering internet healthcare, offering innovative products that enrich elderly care financial services and provide seniors with integrated healthcare solutions.

With breakthroughs in computing power, algorithms, and AI, technology is penetrating the silver economy more deeply. The interaction between the silver economy and technology innovation has become a key arena of global competition. Meanwhile, global population aging and digital globalization may offer China a strategic opportunity to lead in this field.

To further promote the deep integration of technological and industrial innovation in the silver economy, ensuring that technology is truly “age-friendly” and “benefits the elderly,” it is essential to coordinate efforts across multiple areas, including policy, capital, application scenarios, and talent.

First, China should leverage its vast market to build competitive advantages across the entire value chain – from application integration and research and development to capital and talent development – creating an open, innovative ecosystem driven by markets, supported by applications, and rooted in talent.

Second, it is crucial to closely follow global frontiers in silver economy technologies, strengthen international exchanges and cooperation, and nurture globally competitive technology-driven silver economy enterprises in the sector.

Third, it is also important to use the value chain to guide major breakthroughs in aging-related technologies, fostering interaction between basic research and industrial transformation to create a virtuous cycle.

Fourth, building a sound digital governance ecosystem to foster a favorable environment for the silver economy is also critical. Silver consumption is personalized and scenario-based, requiring diverse consumption settings, display platforms, and convenience-enhancing mechanisms.

Amid the dual trends of aging and digitalization, bridging the digital divide for seniors and elderly care workers demands multi-pronged efforts. Legal and regulatory governance is needed to ensure a healthy digital environment, integrate digital tools into seniors’ daily lives, and make the digital economy a key driver of the silver economy.

In the news release, “EchoCare” Ultrasound Large Model Launched in Hong Kong as CAIR Showcases Large-Scale Ultrasound Dataset Training Achievements, issued 17-Sep-2025 by CAIR over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that the headline, 2nd paragraph, 6th paragraph, and 7th paragraph have been updated. The complete, corrected release follows:

“EchoCare” Ultrasound Foundation Model Launched in Hong Kong as CAIR’s New Breakthroughs Propel AI Ultrasound into the Era of Large Models

HONG KONG, Sept. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Amid the global surge in rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, the healthcare sector is entering a critical phase of intelligent transformation. As a vital tool in clinical diagnosis, ultrasound imaging has long been plagued by issues such as low efficiency, inconsistent diagnostic standards, and insufficient AI model accuracy. These challenges urgently call for technological breakthroughs and industrial collaboration. Against this backdrop, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation (HKISI), Chinese Academy of Sciences unveiled its latest scientific achievement – the “EchoCare” Ultrasound Large Model – on 17th September in Hong Kong.

At the press conference, Prof Hongbin Liu, Director and Professor of CAIR, Prof Gaofeng Meng, Deputy Director and Professor of CAIR, Prof Jiebo Luo, Member of Academia Europaea and the US National Academy of Inventors, Prof Randolph Hung-leung Wong, Chief of the Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), were joined by numerous renowned scholars, clinical experts, and more than ten media representatives to witness this milestone breakthrough in AI-powered ultrasound medicine.

Pioneering Structured Contrast Self-Supervised Learning Framework

The “EchoCare” Ultrasound Large Model was trained on the first ultrasound image dataset known to exceed 4 million images. The model introduces a “Structured Contrast Self-Supervised Learning Framework”, which leverages hierarchical tree labels derived from medical priors to enable multi-label semantic relational structured learning and implicit encoding. Through techniques such as Masked Image Modelling (MIM), Adaptive Hard Patch Mining, and Progressive Training, the model effectively enhances its ability to model the deep semantic features of ultrasound images and improves generalisation performance.

Test results demonstrate that “EchoCare” achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance across seven medical tasks, including image segmentation, classification, detection, regression, and enhancement, as well as in over ten downstream applications. On average, it delivers a 3%-5% improvement compared with current SOTA methods.

A Major Milestone for Inclusive Smart Healthcare

In his opening remarks, Prof Jiebo Luo congratulated the successful development of the “EchoCare” Ultrasound Large Model and highly praised it as another significant breakthrough in the deep integration of AI and medical applications. He noted that the implementation of “EchoCare” in routine hospital examinations can significantly reduce reliance on medical specialists while assisting doctors in making diagnoses more efficiently and accurately. This technology is expected to substantially improve the efficiency of medical services while providing greater opportunities for the optimal allocation of healthcare resources.

“Listening to Sound, Grasping Principles”

At the press conference, Prof. Gaofeng Meng, Deputy Director of CAIR, explained that the name “EchoCare” originates from the idiom “Listening to Sound and Grasping Principles” (Ling Yin Cha Li) in Liu Xie’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin Diaolong • Zhiyin). The text notes that “One becomes proficient in music only after mastering a thousand melodies, and gains insight into weaponry only after observing a thousand swords.” which aligns closely with the philosophy behind developing the ultrasound large model. He further introduced that EchoCare innovatively adopts a structured contrastive self-supervised learning approach, enabling feature learning and downstream task decoupling without the need for extensive data annotation, thereby achieving the internalization of prior knowledge in the ultrasound domain and facilitating cross-task knowledge transfer.

Prof. Meng emphasized that, unlike traditional large models, EchoCare innovatively adopts a structural self-supervised learning approach. It removes the need for extensive data annotation, enables feature learning, and decouples downstream tasks, thereby internalizing prior knowledge in ultrasound and facilitating cross-task knowledge transfer.

He also showcased the model’s technical highlights, data advantages, and application results. Specific case validations included 1,556 ovarian tumor ultrasound cases at Qilu Hospital of Shandong University and more than 1,000 thyroid ultrasound examinations at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, where EchoCare significantly outperformed existing state-of-the-art methods.

Relieving Physicians, Benefiting Patients, and Offering Immense Clinical Value

The standardized analytical capabilities of “EchoCare” can effectively reduce the rates of missed and misdiagnosed major diseases, significantly enhancing the efficiency and standardisation of clinical diagnosis. It provides robust technical support for frontline medical practitioners.

During the case-sharing segment, Prof Randolph Hung-leung Wong from CUHK first presented retrospective validation results for the detection and analysis of aortic aneurysms using “EchoCare” in cardiac ultrasound. He also envisioned the potential clinical value of integrating this large model with robotic technology. In the live demonstration, he showcased two ultrasound scanning videos, where the model rapidly captured and analysed the key medical information, successfully identifying abnormal cases and automatically generating ultrasound reports for the doctors’ reference.

Various Views: Technology for the People, AI Deeply Rooted in Reality

During the media Q&A session, Prof Hongbin Liu, Prof Gaofeng Meng and Prof Randolph Wong answered questions from media representatives, such as Phoenix TV. They engaged in in-depth discussions on the technical details, clinical applications, and commercialisation pathways of the EchoCare Ultrasound Large Model. Following the Q&A, the media representatives conducted exclusive interviews with the invited guests and visited the Embodied-AI Surgery Platform developed by CAIR, where they experienced CAIR’s latest AI healthcare achievements up close.

The “EchoCare” Ultrasound Large Model, open-sourced by the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, breaks down the compatibility barriers between traditional ultrasound devices and unlocks the value of multi-centre data, providing medical institutions with reusable AI infrastructure. This achievement not only accelerates the large-scale deployment of ultrasound AI but also injects sustained innovation into the advancement of the smart healthcare industry.

Released by 

The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR).

Established in 2019, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) is one of the two centres under Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation (the only directly affiliated research institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hong Kong).

CAIR is dedicated to integration and  innovation of  artificial intelligence and life sciences, conducting research in three main areas: Multimodal AI Large Model, Embodied Intelligent Robots, and Intelligent Sensing Technologies. CAIR is a key institution supported by Hong Kong’s InnoHK initiative in the field of AI. It is among the few institutions globally that systematically carry out research and development of AI systems for medical and healthcare applications, as well as their technological transformation.