Programme
Dr Teo Shyh Poh is a Consultant Geriatrician and Physician, and head of Geriatrics and Palliative Unit, RIPAS Hospital, Brunei Darussalam.
He has Fellowship with the Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP). He is involved in developing clinical geriatrics services in Brunei, including contributing to policies and planning for older people, and the Brunei Ministry of Health focal person for community geriatrics services. He is also the chairperson for the Brunei Pharmacovigilance Advisory Committee.
Dr Jessica Francis is a Specialist in Special Needs Dentistry (SND) and is currently the first state head of specialty and head of unit for her SND in Sarawak. She is currently providing her service in Sarawak General Hospital and Sarawak Heart Centre. Prior to joining the dental service in Sarawak, she was a Clinical Specialist in SND at Kajang Hospital, Selangor. She has been working within Ministry of Health since the year 2007.
Dr Jessica gained her Bachelor in Dental Surgery degree in 2007 from University of Malaya and her Doctor in Clinical Dentistry (Special Needs Dentistry) in 2016 from University of Melbourne. She is a member of International Association of Disability & Oral Health and elected treasurer of Malaysian Association of Disability & Oral Health.
Dr Jessica has a particular interest in providing oral health care to older people with medical problems as well as with physical and intellectual disabilities. Her current research interests are in the area of behaviour guidance and clinical hypnosis in dentistry.
Dr. Cheah Wee Kooi is currently the Head of the Department and Clinical Research Unit of Hospital Taiping. He is the Resident Geriatrician and Physician in the same hospital and provides visiting consultation to several other Hospitals in the state of Perak. Currently, he sits in several national and state committees including the Evaluation Committee for the Geriatric Subspecialty for the Malaysian Medical Councils. He is a keen researcher and teacher. His research works ranges from Strokes, Cognitive disorders, Metabolic as well as Respiratory Infection. His current work includes the study that looks into the prevalence of Influenza and RSV infection in the elderly admitted with respiratory infection in the hospitals in Malaysia.
Prof Philip Poi Jun Hua trained at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and graduated in 1981. He was conferred with LRCP & S (Ireland) and MB, BCh, BAO from the National University of Ireland. Prof Poi obtained the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland in 1986 and trained in Geriatric Medicine at Oxford, St Bartholomew’s, London and Southampton before returning to Malaysia.
Having contributed to the development of a new geriatric unit in University Malaya Medical Centre, the first purpose-built ward for acutely ill elderly patients in Malaysia, Prof Poi is in the Ministry of Health’s Technical Committee for the National Healthcare for the Elderly program, which is involved in policy-making decisions concerning elderly care and in training their trainers to improve the quality of health care delivery to all elderly Malaysians.
Supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students in University Malaya, he is also actively involved in lectures, research, and consultancy. Prof Poi has contributed to chapters in several medical textbooks, clinical practice guidelines (in Dementia and osteoarthritis), and has had articles published in several medical journals and in the popular press. He has been an invited speaker in many Asia Pacific conferences and has spoken in symposiums at the recent European Union Geriatric Medicine conferences in Europe.
A former Vice-President of the Gerontological Association of Malaysia, he is the current President of the Malaysian Society of Geriatric Medicine and continues to be a long-serving executive committee member and medical advisor of the Alzheimer’s Disease Foundation of Malaysia. Over the past 10 years, as a founding member of the Asia Pacific Geriatric Network, he has helped to create an informal but important network amongst the leading geriatricians in the region. This has resulted in Asia Pacific Geriatric Conferences organized annually since 2006 in different countries and has helped our trainee Geriatricians gain exposure to different care delivery systems in various countries.
Dr. Sally Suriani Ahip is a Family Medicine Specialist with specialized training in Community Geriatrics. She is currently the Head of Family Medicine Specialists Services in Samarahan Division and the Head of Kota Samarahan Health Clinic. Dr. Sally has founded the first national Primary Healthcare Community Geriatrics Services @Unit GEKO (Geriatric Komuniti) in October 2019, an initiative for early frailty assessment and timely multidisciplinary intervention in the primary care setting.
Dr. Sally has been actively involved in 17 Investigator-Initiated types of research nationally and internationally, with a wide spectrum of topics, largely in the field of frailty and aged care. She is also a member of several professional national and international affiliations, including Family Medicine Specialist Association, Academy of Family Physicians Malaysia, Centre of Research Excellence for Frailty and Sarcopenia South Australia, Australian Association of Gerontology, and Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, just to name a few. Being a familiar face in the local and international conferences, she has presented various papers for healthcare professionals and public engagements through community programs across a spectrum of diseases in primary care. Her passion for her work and excellent performance has earned her excellent service awards throughout her tenure.
Dr. Tan Kok Yang specializes in colorectal cancer surgery and laparoscopic colorectal surgery with a special interest in low rectal cancers and sphincter-preserving surgery. He is also trained to perform advanced procedures in colonoscopy.
His research work is well-published in numerous international peer-reviewed journals. He is on the International Advisory Board of Digestive Endoscopy and also on the Editorial Board of World Journal of Gastroenterology and World Journal of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. He has also written a number of book chapters on colorectal surgery and published a number of editorials in international surgical journals.
He is the editor of the books “Colorectal Cancer in the Elderly” and “Transdisciplinary Perioperative Care in Colorectal Surgery” published by Springer in 2012 and 2014 respectively.
He is a Member of the Surgical Residency Advisory Committee of Singapore and has also been appointed as National Examiner for General Surgery. He is a member of the Singapore Medical Council Complaints Panel and serves on the Committee of the National Advisory Committee for Cancer. He served as the President of the Society of Colorectal Surgeons of Singapore from 2015 to 2017. He also served as a Board Member of the Chapter of General Surgeons of the College of Surgeons.
His other passion in the field of surgery is the improvement of outcomes in elderly patients. He is the Clinical Director of the Geriatric Surgery Programme of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. He is actively involved in projects and clinical research on this challenging group of patients and is a member of the American Geriatrics Society and founded The Geriatric Surgery Society of Singapore in 2017.
Dr. Terence Ong is a consultant geriatrician and lecturer at the University Malaya Medical Centre. After completing his specialist training in Nottingham, UK, he pursued a clinical academic career at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. There he balanced clinical duties providing geriatric medicine liaison input into Trauma & Orthopaedics and the Major Trauma Unit, and being research active in the field of fragility fracture management in older people. The lure to come back home led to his return in January this year. Up till recently, he was secretary to the British Geriatrics Society Falls and Bone Health Section, secretary to the BGS Trent region and member of the Royal Osteoporosis Society’s clinical standards for Fracture Liaison Services. He currently serves as Associate Editor for the journal, Age and Ageing, and is on the editorial board for Osteoporosis Review.