Dr Chong Mei Sian

Dr Chong Mei Sian is a geriatrician at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Singapore.

She is passionate about holistic dementia care and geriatric care.

She practised at Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s (TTSH) Institute of Geriatrics and Active Ageing geriatric medicine department for 16 years. There, she helped establish the subacute geriatric unit and the geriatric monitoring unit. She was the doctor-in-charge of the cognition and memory disorder service, the Centre for Geriatric Medicine, from 2010 to 2014.

While being a programme director of TTSH-Ang Mo Kio National Healthcare Group (NHG) Polyclinics assisting in dementia integration, she set up a primary care dementia clinic, which has evolved to the Geriatric Integrated Network for Dementia (GERInD) in the central region. This includes medical integration of general practitioners as well as a geriatric home care team.

Dr Chong graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and started her geriatric medicine specialty training in 2000 after passing her member of the Royal College Physicians, UK examinations. She obtained specialist accreditation in 2003 and subsequently received training in UCLA, US, for cognition and for sleep in the elderly. She has a graduate diploma in clinical epidemiology from Newcastle, Australia and is a fellow of Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh in 2011. She underwent further training in delirium care.

She was a programme director of the inaugural staff registrar scheme, senior clinical lecturer at NUS and co-programme coordinator for the Institute of Geriatrics and Active Ageing’s intensive practical course in delirium/dementia care for healthcare professionals. She was a specialist volunteer in the Singapore Volunteers Overseas (SVO) training workshop on caring for the caregivers of the elderly-cum-feasibility study for the SVO specialist team to Indonesia in 2007 and 2009 with the Singapore International Foundation.

Dr Chong was a member of the Ministry of Health (MOH) national dementia network and chairman for MOH clinical practice guidelines for dementia in 2007. She also helped formulate the national dementia strategy, an internal document for MOH. She assisted in formulating the inclusion of dementia into the National Chronic Disease Management Programme (CDMP) and assisted MOH in the implementation process from 2010 to 2011. She also completed a part-time appointment with the MOH community mental health division to draft the national dementia strategy.

She was on the clinical scientist career scheme from NHG with a focus on cognition, frailty, sarcopenia, successful ageing and models of geriatric care.

She has published more than 60 papers and book chapters, given many presentations and talks in both local and international meetings. She has received several awards including the Excellent Service Award and the NHG Excellence in Action Award.