Award-winning AI app by HK teen sparks academic integrity debate

A controversy surrounding a local teenager's award-winning AI-powered medical app has become one of Hong Kong's biggest education scandals in recent years.

- Magdalene Fung

HONG KONG -

The saga has ignited debate over academic integrity in Hong Kong's competitive Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education environment as well as deep-seated socio-economic inequalities in the city.

The 15-year-old student from one of Hong Kong's top schools was accused of academic fraud after she won eight awards in international competitions for the medication prescription software, MediSafe, which was submitted as her personal invention.

The app is a medication management system designed to prevent prescription errors through AI-driven verification of patient information.

The accusations came after university student Hailey Cheng posted on social networking platform Threads in June, casting doubt on how a secondary school student could have created such a complex AI system and questioning the privacy of patients' medical data used in the app.

Although Ms Cheng, 20, a maths major at the City University of Hong Kong, did not initially name the teen, internet users quickly identified the latter as the allegations spread online.

Public attention soon turned to the teen's privileged background - her father is a renowned liver disease specialist and her mother is a professor at a local university's medical school.

"The audacity to present that work (as one's own) and not be in fear of getting caught shows how the elite think they are above all others," one internet user wrote in a Reddit post on the issue.

Another recent post referred to the teen as "a typical pretty privileged liar from the upper class".

On Aug 6, Mr Ahmed Jemaa, co-founder of US firm AI Health Studio, released a statement revealing that his team was paid by the teen's mother in March 2024 to build the software and that they were not told it would be submitted to academic competitions.