Medical Supplies & Medicine

A serial entrepreneur based in Hong Kong for more than 20 years, France-born Sophie Martineau set up her medical supplies business Aquila Healthcare under the brand AquilaVIE in 2020. The launch was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks rapidly outpaced supply.

As an international financial centre, Hong Kong is an ideal development base for many overseas enterprises – and the city’s attraction is enhanced by the comprehensive protection its intellectual property laws provide. Some well-known Japanese chain drugstores have chosen to open stores in Hong Kong, and have applied for trademark registration to enhance consumers' recognition of their brands.

A team from the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine has developed patent technologies that can help pharmaceutical companies improve vaccine effectiveness of their products and efficiency of developing vaccines. The start-up has already signed cooperation agreements with a number of pharmaceutical companies to co-develop vaccines.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of surgical masks have been discarded every day in Hong Kong, putting a heavy burden on landfills and potentially posing a threat to the marine ecology.

Technology investors usually expect rapid returns on their assets, but the life sciences, especially medicine, have notoriously long development times. Returns can take decades to eventuate and ventures often turn out to be unviable.

The growing prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the global aging population prompted a neuroscience research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to find a way to prevent and treat these debilitating diseases.