(CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS)- February introduces another round of new member companies for MIT Media Lab. Lee Kum Kee (LKK) corporations, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate with huge presence in processed food industry, is some kind of an outlier. Today, Eric Ng, the senior vice president for Group IT, Digital Innovations and Strategic Innovation, of Lee Kin Kee (LKK) corporations, arrives at MIT to meet and greet the faculties and students, with some exciting exchanges of ideas.

As contrary to the popular knowledge of a sauce company, Ng says, LKK is now more positioned as a health product company. This is not how LKK started out, however. Over the hundred years of the company’s history, the technology has evolved to adapt radically different plantation and living environment. “The founders of LKK realized Chinese people are becoming more health-oriented minded,” says Ng, ” but the very existence of Chinese medicine may be extinct before we even use herbal medicine in our daily lives.” Since the inception of the health group

As students dive into the connections between Chinese medicine and research at Media Lab, Ng reveals five different areas of health involvement, spanning physical health, family, work, friends, and self. Other than Infinitus, the group’s main effort behind Chinese herbal supplement products, the company is also invested in a new project called HeHa. HeHa aims to be a platform of promoting health in community. The current product prototypes of HeHa include a smartphone app, biosensing wristband using ECG signals to detect immunity strength, and data mining methods for discovering a person’s happiness state. Hopefully, as Ng explains, HeHa can create a feedback loop within the community following a “learn, do, and share” cycle. Ultimately, people can be mobilized into proactive health promoting habits that shape a better lifestyle.

A lot of interesting discussions emerge as the students interact after the presentation. One student from Personal Robots Group suggests a connection between personal companion and personal health coach. This brings up a main challenge for the company: most of health related electronic devices do not drive sustainable usage of the individual. In contrast, devices like smartphones attract much more attention, but often bring much more stress with the frequent usage. “How to deliver happiness digitally will be the key factors for HeHa’s success,” concludes Ng.

Behavior changing technology, information interface, and sustainable system design – these are ultimately some fundamental roots that challenge LKK. Ryan Chin, research scientist at Changing Place Group, brings up a potential project at Hong Kong with directions for solving sustainable farming and building behavior changing environment. Pollution of plantation creates serious problems for people accessing Chinese herb. City Farm model may be a good alternative for scalable and distributed Chinese herb plantation. Improving public health through a pollution-free methodology will be crucial for system design, Chin suggests.

Discussion from other groups emerges and scope turns to be quite flexible, with ideas on measuring emotion, collaborative quality search, social commerce, and personal coaching. In other words, Yelp for health conscious community. As precisely described by social technology, how to trigger needs, make consumers follow, and motivate them to sustain behaviors are key to bring social impact.

With already established research collaborations with Harvard University and MIT Sloan, LKK Health is undertaking a significant stride forward with its new collaboration with Media Lab. For the mission of making people happy, LKK’s ought to make an interesting strategic decision that may become important for years to come.

by Pau Pernghwa Kung