Health minister Lo Chung-mau said on Saturday that he's confident that Hong Kong's high quality healthcare and dental services will remain competitive, even though some local patients have been heading north for services on the mainland that are cheaper.

He said while some patients think the mainland offers better value-for-money services, the SAR has nothing to worry about so long as the profession keeps improving its services.

Professor Lo said on RTHK's Your Home Address programme that as the government seeks to develop the SAR as an international health and medical innovation hub, Hong Kong can also drive advancement in the field.

"Hong Kong has excellent health care service and we have a wonderful university here with a medical school and a dental school. We're not just good in providing service, we should be good in innovation as well," the minister said.

"If we are good, we have all the talents, enough talents, we should actually not be looking just at providing services. We should be driving, we should be the driver for innovation."

The secretary noted that a Hospital Authority initiative to offer medical staff low-interest home loans to retain talent has been going well, with some 80 percent - or more than a thousand applications approved.

Lo expressed the hope that upcoming legal changes that would allow more non-locally trained healthcare professionals to practice in the SAR will help ease the staffing shortage.