HINCare: An Intelligent Helper Recommender System for Elderly Care

In Hong Kong, the number of elderly citizens will reach one-third of the population within the next decade. To mitigate this problem, timebanking has received attention in recent years. In timebanking, an NGO helper earns time credits through providing voluntary services (e.g., household duties) to elders. These time credits can be used to acquire other services. Although timebanking has shown the promise of promoting mutual care in many countries, its potential has not been fully utilized, due to the lack of IT and data support. We thus develop HINCare, a software platform that supports timebanking for multiple NGOs. Besides providing convenience to NGO supervisors, helpers, and elders, HINCare makes use of a heterogeneous information network (HIN) for recommending suitable helpers to elders. This is the first time a graph-based recommender system is used for such purposes. Currently, HINCare is used by 12 NGOs to serve more than 5000 users in Hong Kong. In this demonstration, participants can play the role of helpers and elders in the HINCare environment.