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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority (HA) announced that a five-year contract for the provision of indoor poster and outdoor wall site advertising space in public hospitals had been awarded to two professional advertising companies as one of the initiatives to enhance the alternative source of income for public hospitals.
The HA Director (Cluster Services), Dr Cheung Wai-lun, said, "As stated by our Chief Executive in the annual report 2005-2006, HA has to open up avenues for generating revenue and one of the revenue generation programmes is the use of hospital premises for advertising. The feasibility of outsourcing advertising services was considered in detail over the past few years as a target of generating additional income to invest on patient services."
A pilot project was launched in Tuen Mun Hospital in June, 2004. Following a review on the effectiveness of the project, a proposal was discussed and approved by the HA Board in July, 2006, for a full-scale implementation in public hospitals.
Dr Cheung said the Hospital Authority had completed the open tender exercise for the indoor poster and outdoor wall site advertisement in phases, and a five-year contract was awarded to two advertising companies, Convey Advertising Company Limited and Easy & Savvy Media Limited. Poster advertisements were launched at a total of about 300 panels in more than 10 public hospitals starting from the end of 2007. As for the external wall advertisement, it is scheduled that preparation of the five identified sites in Sha Tin Hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital would be ready for operation by April.
"As a responsible public organisation, HA will strictly regulate the content of the advertisements in accordance with the HA Advertising Standards. The gist of the standards is modelled on the spirit of the Generic Code of Practice on Domestic Free TV Advertising Code in Hong Kong with clear rules and regulations for each category of advertisement.
"We will prudently examine and approve the content of every advertisement. An ethics committee has been formed and in action to oversee and handle any appeal cases arising from the advertising content. Any advertisements that might have violated the code of conduct of HA as a responsible healthcare provider, or may be misleading or offensive in nature, will not be allowed. The Hospital Authority will regularly review the Standards for continuous improvement."
As an alternative source of revenue, the advertising companies have to comply with the contractual agreement to pay the authority the Minimum Guaranteed Licence Fees annually and share the profit based on the actual advertising income (if it is higher than the Minimum Guaranteed Licence Fees). It is estimated that a minimum guaranteed annual income of more than $3 million will be generated from the advertising outsource programme.
Ends/Friday, January 4, 2008
Issued at HKT 18:55
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