Dr Frank Lai

Associate Professor

School: Communities and Education

Dr Frank Ho-yin Lai is an occupational therapist by training, with an international career spanning clinical practice, research, funded innovation, and academic leadership across Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the United Kingdom. He received his BSc, MSc and PhD in Occupational Therapy / Rehabilitation Sciences from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), and holds the Diploma in Epidemiology & Applied Statistics and the Diploma in Occupational Safety & Health.

Dr Lai brings nearly two decades of frontline clinical experience, having worked within the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong as a senior occupational therapist across psychiatric rehabilitation, orthopaedic and spinal cord injury rehabilitation, and stroke care, including leading the establishment of occupational therapy services and training in Mainland China following the Sichuan earthquake. This clinical grounding underpins a substantial research profile spanning vocational rehabilitation, geri-orthopaedic rehabilitation, wheelchair and seating, amputation rehabilitation, home safety and falls prevention, executive functioning, dementia, cognitive screening, caregiving, and rehabilitation technology — including his development of the Virtual Reality Working Memory Test (VRWMT), a validated cognitive screening tool now used in both UK and Hong Kong research.

His transition into academia — first as Assistant Professor and lead of the Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) laboratory at PolyU, and from 2021 as the Assistant Professor at Northumbria University, where he becomes Associate Professor in Occupational Therapy — has been matched by a strong record in competitive grant bidding across UK and Hong Kong funding bodies (see Research Interest, below), and by a distinctive strength in cross-cultural research: adapting and validating clinical and research instruments across different cultural, linguistic, and health-system contexts. Alongside this, he has held a range of administrative and leadership responsibilities, including establishing training and career-progression frameworks for allied health professions as Hospital Authority Training Officer, and serving as Subject Leader, Deputy Enrollment Liaison Officer, and Programme Leader in his academic posts.

Dr Lai's international background continues to inform his community engagement: he is a trustee of a Newcastle-based charity supporting communities facing social inequality, an honorary advisor to an older Chinese people's network in North East England, a Council Member of the Chinese Dementia Research Association in Hong Kong, and an advisor to community dementia-care and youth social-innovation programmes in Hong Kong.

Current Roles & Affiliations

Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy, Department of Social Work, Education & Community Wellbeing, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Northumbria University
National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Academy Member
Honorary Senior Clinical Researcher, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear (CNTW) NHS Foundation Trust
Clinical Observer, The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals (NUTH) NHS Foundation Trust

Qualifications

PhD, Rehabilitation Sciences (Part-time), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Master of Christian Faith, The Hong Kong Alliance Bible Seminary
MSc, Health Care in Occupational Therapy, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
BSc, Occupational Therapy, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Diploma in Epidemiology & Applied Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Diploma in Occupational Safety and Health, The Open University of Hong Kong

Professional Registration & Fellowships

Registered Occupational Therapist, Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Member, Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT)
Professional Member, The Alzheimer's Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment (ISTAART)

Email Frank

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Dr Lai's research centres on healthy ageing, dementia care, and the application of emerging technologies in rehabilitation. His key areas include:

Dementia and cognitive health — holistic dementia care spanning people living with dementia and their caregivers, cognitive screening, executive function assessment, and neuromodulation for older adults with dementia and MCI.
Virtual reality, augmented reality and AI in healthcare — development and validation of VR/AR/AI-based tools for early detection of cognitive impairment and enhancing independence in daily living, including his own VRWMT screening instrument.
Falls prevention and community independence — piloting a VR360-based occupational therapy intervention to reduce fear of falling as a barrier to active travel in community-dwelling older adults, alongside a structured digital-skills training programme for community OTs.
Cross-cultural adaptation of assessment tools — validating and adapting instruments across cultural and linguistic contexts, including the Chinese Home Falls and Accidents Screening Tool, the Chinese Brief Ageing Perceptions Questionnaire (C-BAPQ), and the English-language validation of the Self-competence in Death Work Scale.
Rehabilitation sciences — vocational, geri-orthopaedic, amputation, and wheelchair/seating rehabilitation, and home safety and falls prevention more broadly.
Digital and public health innovation — public education platforms and cognitive training applications for older adults, and intergenerational approaches to dementia awareness.

Grants and Funding

Dr Lai has secured and contributed to a substantial portfolio of externally funded research, spanning Hong Kong and UK funding bodies, as both Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator.

As Principal Investigator, he has led over a dozen funded projects totalling more than HK$6 million and £120K, primarily focused on VR/AI-based cognitive screening and training tools, dementia care education, and neuromodulation research. Since joining Northumbria University, he has secured a series of UK-based awards, including an Education Enhancement Project grant, Alzheimer's Research UK's Inspire Fund, and two NIHR awards, reflecting a growing UK-focused programme building on his earlier VR and dementia-screening work.

As Co-Investigator, he has contributed to major collaborative studies, such as research on gut microbiome modulation, cognitive-motor dual-task training, virtual reality for mental distress, and autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, worth over HK$26 million.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Cognition in virtual reality: assessing user acceptability and feasibility of virtual reality cognitive screening for older adults, Lai, F., Yee, B., Wang, E., Butler, J., Graham, A., Hai, E., Darling, C., Whittington, S., Lowe, J. 1 Jul 2025, In: Frontiers in Psychology
Empowering Older Persons Through Creative Engagement: A Feasibility Study of ‘The House of Evergreen Arts’ Among Chinese Community Members in Newcastle, England, Evans, L., Darling, C., Lee, P., Tsang, L., Luddington, S., Lai, F. 27 Jan 2026, In: Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology
Assessing Rapid Spatial Working Memory in Community-living Older Adults in a Virtual Adaptation of the Rodent Water Maze Paradigm, Wang, E., Lai, F., Leung, W., Shiu, T., Wong, H., Tao, Y., Zhao, X., Zhang, T., Yee, B. 5 Jan 2025, In: Behavioural Brain Research
A Health App for Post-Pandemic Years (HAPPY) for people with physiological and psychosocial distress during the post-pandemic era: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial, Liu, J., Man, D., Lai, F., Cheung, T., Cheung, A., Cheung, D., Choi, T., Fong, G., Kwan, R., Lam, S., Ng, V., Wong, H., Yang, L., Shum, D. 2023, In: Digital Health
Application of VR360 for clinical reasoning development in Occupational Therapy students in handling complex behavioural symptoms in Individuals with Dementia, Lai, F., Yip, B., Hai, E., Man, D. 19 May 2026, In: Occupational Therapy International
Caregiving Across Cultures: Understanding the Interplay of Strain, Self-Perception of Ageing, and Health., Lai, F., Sattar, Z., Siu, A., Hai, E., Whittington, S., Lai, C., Chan, W., Luddington, S., Yip, B. 1 Jul 2025, In: Journal of Rehabilitation
Moderating role of positive aspects of caregiving in the relationship between caring burden and suicidal ideation in family caregivers of community-dwelling older adults with neurocognitive disorders, Huo, Z., Yip, B., Lee, A., Cheng, S., Chan, W., Fung, A., Ma, S., Cheng, C., Lai, F., Wong, S., Lam, L. 14 Jul 2025, In: BMC Geriatrics
Information Communication Technology as Instrumental Activities of Daily Living for Aging-in-Place in Chinese Older Adults With and Without Cognitive Impairment: The Validation Study of Advanced Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale, Lai, F., Tong, A., Fung, A., Yu, K., Wong, S., Lai, C., Man, D. 9 Mar 2022, In: Frontiers in Neurology
The association between satisfaction with life and anxiety symptoms among Chinese elderly: a moderated mediation analysis, Lai, C., Chen, L., Lai, F., Fung, A., Ng, S. 14 Dec 2023, In: BMC Geriatrics
Individualized and Ecological Analyses of the Needs of Family Caregivers of Older Adults with Dementia: The Phenomenological Approach., Lai, F. 20 Dec 2022, In: Journal of Rehabilitation

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Publication Peer-review: Experimental Aging Research (Journal) 2021
Publication Peer-review: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Journal) 2021
Publication Peer-review: Applied Research in Quality of Life (Journal) 2020
Publication Peer-review: Dementia (Journal) 2020
Invited talk: International HealthTech Forum 2021 2020

PGR Supervision

Ho Yee Kwong TBC ***JWh 11/09/2025*** Start Date: 01/10/2025 End Date: 18/10/2025

Qualifications

Religious Studies June 30 2025
Education July 04 2022
Philosophy PhD May 15 2017
Management Diploma May 31 2007
Health MSc November 21 2001
Statistics Diploma August 12 1998
Occupational Therapy BSc October 26 1995
Member of Asian Falls Network 2025
NIHR Academy 2025
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) FHEA 2022
Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) Registered HCPC 2021
Professional Member Royal College of Occupational Therapists 2021
Member of The Alzheimer's Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment (ISTAART) ISTAART 2020
Hong Kong Registered Occupational Therapist HKROT 1995