As a major discipline in a medical school, the Department of Medicine and its history are inseparable from that of the Medical Faculty and The University of Hong Kong. The Department, in helping to maintain the health of Hong Kong’s population over the last 120 years, is also inseparable from the city’s development from a coastal port to an international city. The Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, as one of 13 divisions in the Department of Medicine, has made important contributions in the city’s healthcare with its cutting-edge research.

Professor Mary Ip is Chief of the Division and she is well recognised as a distinguished respiratory specialist. She engages avidly in clinical practice, medical education and research. Her clinical interest and expertise span a range of respiratory afflictions which have special relevance in Hong Kong due to their high local incidence, including sleep apnea, obstructive airways disease, and malignancies.

As Associate Dean in Education in the Medical Faculty for nearly ten years, she not only uncompromisingly led curricular development, but also provided personal attention to many student affairs. In 2004, she initiated the establishment of the Institute of Medical and Health Sciences Education as a platform for the advancement of teaching and education in the Faculty.

Professor Ip pioneered research and clinical development in sleep disordered breathing in Hong Kong. As recently as 15 years ago, sleep apnea was little known by doctors or the lay community in Hong Kong, and the condition was thought to be uncommon in Chinese or Asians. With the findings of her community-based study, the first to demonstrate the common occurrence of sleep apnea in Chinese adults in Hong Kong, interest in this field rapidly rose and clinical services became widely available. The findings also awakened interest in this condition among other Asian populations. Her research team has since conducted clinical, translational and basic research with special focus on the cardiometabolic impact of sleep disordered breathing. Her work is internationally recognised, and she has received numerous invitations to deliver lectures at international and regional conferences, and to contribute state-of-art review articles in prestigious journals.

Professor Ip has also led multi-centre studies on paediatric and adult lung function in Hong Kong, the work of which produced the currently used standard reference sets for the local population.

Peer recognition of her role as academic leader in respiratory medicine and sleep medicine is reflected in her previous election and appointments to the posts of Chairman to the Hong Kong Thoracic Society, the Hong Kong Lung Foundation, the Hong Kong Society of Sleep Medicine, Specialty Board in Respiratory Medicine of the Hong Kong College of Physicians and Governor/International Regent of the American College of Chest Physicians (HK & Macau Chapter). She has been invited to various programme committees of international respiratory societies, and is currently the President Elect of the Asia Pacific Society of Respirology, the society which represents the respiratory discipline in the Asia-Pacific region.