Dr Vincent Ip MD MRCP

William M. Glenn

When he was 20, Vincent Ip just worried about whether he would pass his medical exams. When he was 40, he wondered whether he was “up to par” and took more than 10 trips to the United Kingdom to upgrade his skills in internal medicine. And when Dr Ip hit 60, he decided he wanted to “start all over again.”

So in 2001, Dr Ip quit his office practice and enrolled as a full-time special student in the Department of Mathematics at Hong Kong Baptist University. “It was like being married for 40 years and then rediscovering your first love,” he laughs. “That first day back in university was like walking into a beautiful rose garden.”

Dr Ip says he wanted to combine his extensive medical experience—including almost 20 years as the staff physician with the French Consulate in Hong Kong—with his deep love of mathematics. After 5 years of study, he turned his attention to mapping the annual spread of influenza around the globe.

By mathematically matching the behaviour of a single virus between one moment and the next, the serial data yield a fixed number, he explains. Then, based on the observational database of influenza virus isolations compiled by various health agencies, you are able to calculate and predict the pathways of infection.

“This is not a simulation, but a representation of the real situation,” says Dr Ip. By calculating which strains will predominate and where they will spread, health care authorities will be able to tailor effective vaccines and stockpile them where they will be most needed.

Today, Dr Ip still practises family medicine at an in-store clinic in Richmond, BC, by day and crunches flu data by night. Every Wednesday, after the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Health Canada post the latest influenza statistics, Dr Ip completes his matched-pair calculations and posts them online where they are avidly scanned by academics, epidemiologists, and public health agencies. “Over the last 90 days, my LinkedIn website had 783 visitors, including 127 university professors and 27 CDC staff members,” he says proudly.

So far, his research has been entirely on a volunteer basis. “When I went back to school, I figured that—if I was lucky—I would have 20 good years left to work on the mathematics of medicine,” he says. “Every day when I finish work, whether I’m at the clinic or busy with my research, I say ‘Thank you God’ and pray that I am able to do the same thing the next day.”

“What is the difference between an apple falling from a tree and an influenza virus floating through the air?” Dr Ip asks. “If the apple lands on your head, it causes a single bump. If the virus lodges in the chest of a resident in an old age home, it rapidly creates another 20 copies floating through the air.” The physics behind a falling apple provided the basis for much of our understanding of the universe, says Dr Ip. The mathematics of a floating virus is providing greater insight on the spread of influenza.

“Back in medical school at the University of Manitoba, Dr Jack Hildes—the godfather of aboriginal health care in northern Canada—told me ‘Vincent, do your math!’ It took me 50 years to finally take his advice.”

“[He] told me ‘Vincent, do your math!’”

PHOTOS (LEFT): Dr Ip graphing his influenza data, and Dr Ip with clinical trainee, Dr Virginia Le, at the Richmond In-Store Medical Clinic.

PHOTOS (RIGHT): (From top, down) Receptionist, Winnie Tang, posing as a patient for Dr Le to examine under the supervision of Dr Ip; Valentino Leus, playing with his dinosaur with his grandpa; and Dr Ip with his daughter, Joyce Ip Leus, and his wife, Ip Chiang Sun Ching. (Above) Dr Ip with his “Matched-Pair” poster, which he presented in Oxford, England, in 2013.

Footnotes

Dr Ip is a family physician in Vancouver, BC.
THE COVER PROJECT Canadian Family Physician has embarked on a project to assemble the portrait of family medicine in Canada. Each cover of the journal features a family physician chosen at random from our membership list, along with a short essay—a brief glimpse of the person and the practice. Over time, the randomness will become representative and the differences, taken together, will define what it is that all family physicians have in common.