Dr KIM Guowei

Dr Kim Guowei graduated from National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2007. He completed surgical residency at the National University Hospital (NUH) in 2016, serving as Chief Resident. He was awarded the Healthcare Manpower Development Programme Skills Attachment Award in 2018 and spent a year at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Korea, mastering laparoscopic and robotic surgery for gastric cancer.

With a keen interest in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and education, he served as a Clinical Lecturer for the Department of Surgery, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS, from 2014 to 2021, before being appointed as an Assistant Professor in 2021.

Dr Kim has also trained postgraduate doctors in the National University Health System (NUHS) Residency Programme since 2017, serving as Core Faculty and then as Associate Programme Director and finally as Program Director of the NUHS General Surgery Residency Programme, grooming the next generation of surgeons. He was awarded the NUS “Dean’s Excellence Award” for teaching and education in 2017, the “NUS Medicine Fortitude Award” in 2020 for educational contributions during the COVID crisis and the NUH Education Award: GREAT Teacher (Interactive), GREAT Teacher (Didactic) in 2022.

Asst Prof Kim has a strong interest in innovation in surgery, and strongly believes that keeping abreast with advances in technology is quintessential to give Singaporean patients access to the best medical care available.

To this end, he embraces technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics to improve existing techniques to improve patient outcomes. One such example would be the successful performance of robotic telesurgery over a distance of more than 5,000 km between Singapore and Japan in October 2023 (https://youtu.be/BF7N3Pli7gI). He also is an early adopter of new techniques, being part of the team that performed the first Pressurised Intraperitoneal Aerosolised Chemotherapy (PIPAC) procedure in Asia in 2016, conducting several first-in-the-world trials on PIPAC, and was the first in the region to successfully perform mediastinoscopy assisted trans-hiatal esophagectomy (MATHE), for patients in whom conventional esophagectomy approaches are not feasible. Being a keen advanced endoscopist, Dr Kim also performs endoscopic tube and stent insertion, and performs Per Oral Endoscopic Myotomy (POEM) for Achalasia, Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) for Upper Gastrointestinal tumours, Endoscopic Full Thickness Resection (EFTR) for submucosal tumours of the stomach and the first Endoscopic Sleeve Gastroplasty (ESG) at NUH for bariatric patients.

While in public service, he was also awarded the Esprit de Corps Award (Alexandra Hospital) 2023 for exemplary patient care. He also serves as a proctor and an instructor at local and regional endoscopic and surgical workshops and hospitals, and has been invited to speak at international conferences on robotic surgery, artificial intelligence in Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery, and on surgical innovation and techniques. Since moving to private practice, Dr Kim still serves as a Visiting Consultant at NUH to continue to contribute to public health care and education.