In a significant shift for elder healthcare in the city, MGM Healthcare has launched Swayam, Chennai’s first comprehensive, multidisciplinary geriatric programme built on a structured continuity-of-care model aimed at restoring — and sustaining — quality of life for seniors.

 

Swayam is designed to support elderly patients and their families with seamless access to coordinated medical care.

 

The programme integrates outpatient consultations, dedicated in-patient wards with senior-friendly ICUs, and hospital-to-home services — including direct visits, remote monitoring, and structured follow-ups for patients at home or in assisted-living facilities.

 

The launch was inaugurated by Col. K. Prabhakar Hebbar (Retd.), Joseph Marita, Branch Head and Kirshnaveni. V, Dignity Foundation, in the presence of Dr. Senathi Nanda Kishore, Clinical Director & Senior Consultant & Clinical Lead – Anaesthesiology and Surgical ICU, MGM Healthcare, and Dr. P. Sivaraj, Senior Consultant, Department of Internal Medicine, who heads Swayam.

 

Unlike conventional geriatric services that operate in silos, Swayam brings medical, psychological, functional, nutritional, sensory, dental, and home-based monitoring under a single coordinated framework — ensuring clinical cohesion across specialties.

 

Its team offers comprehensive geriatric assessment; chronic disease management for conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular risk; polypharmacy review and medication rationalisation; preventive health and risk stratification; cognitive and memory evaluation; rehabilitation support; metabolic and renal disorder management; infection care; mobility assessment; and frailty and fall-risk evaluation.

 

Dr. Senathi Nanda Kishore underscored the urgency of structured geriatric medicine in India.

 

“India is ageing rapidly, yet structured geriatric medicine remains underdeveloped. Ageing is often normalised as decline - chronic pain, loneliness, reduced mobility, polypharmacy, and sensory deterioration are accepted as ‘natural’. Swayam challenges this narrative. We are not merely a treatment clinic; we represent a proactive, preventive, and restorative ecosystem for senior wellbeing. We are not managing old age - we are optimising healthy ageing.”

 

Dr. P. Sivaraj highlighted the gaps in existing care models.

 

“Current geriatric care is often fragmented across specialties - reactive rather than preventive, with limited psychological and social assessment. Medication management is seldom well integrated, and follow-up rarely extends into structured home-based care. 

 

"In contrast, we offer Chennai’s most structured multidisciplinary geriatric programme, built on a true continuity-of-care model spanning outpatient, inpatient, and home care. The emphasis is on longitudinal monitoring rather than episodic intervention - reframing ageing from inevitable decline to a manageable, optimisable transition”.