UWIMAA Toronto's Distinguished Service Award 2016 goes to Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong

2016 - Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong MBBS ’65 – In recognition of exceptional service in medical education

Dr Herbert Ho Ping Kong is the senior consulting physician at the University Health Network in Canada and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

He is a renowned internist and a distinguished graduate of The University of the West Indies. He has had an extensive career as an exemplary physician and teacher, whose practice has focused on difficult diagnostic problems, for which he is internationally recognised.

He founded the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal Canada. . He relocated to Toronto in 1984 and was promoted to the position of full professor in 1990 by the University of Toronto. In 2004, he became the first holder of the Gladstone and Maisie Chang endowed chair in internal medicine teaching at UHN and University of Toronto.

He has inspired a new generation of faculty that is committed to excellence in teaching. He served as core director for the Internal Medicine Residency Programme at The Toronto Hospital through the 1990s and established many innovative programmes as well as a system to critically evaluate teaching skills and to document effective teaching methods across a variety of educational levels.

In October 2008, he co-founded the Centre of Excellence for Education and Practice at the Toronto Western Hospital, which is named for him.

He is lauded by his peers as a 'diagnostic magician', and has published The Art of Medicine, which draws on his personal cases and more than 50 years' experience as a clinician.