This year marks the 38th year of close collaboration between the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians (HKCFP) and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) in hosting the Conjoint Fellowship Examination in Hong Kong. The clinical examination has just been completed successfully on 27th October. We are most grateful for the ongoing strong support from the RACGP Examination team throughout the year in preparation for the written and the clinical part of the Conjoint examination. This year, Dr. Tess van Duuren, Censor-in-chief of RACGP, and Dr. Rebecca Lock, National CCE Assessment Advisor of RACGP, are our two external examiners flying all the way from Australia to give us advice and support during the whole process of the clinical examination. Thank you very much Tess and Rebecca, we have learnt a lot from you. We look forward to even closer collaborations between our two Colleges in the years to come.

Not only do we host the Conjoint Examination together, our two Colleges also have collaborations on family medicine training as the RACGP has helped to provide ongoing accreditation to our vocational training programme ensuring 

the structure, process and outcome of our training in on par with the best international standards. In addition, our two Colleges also have reciprocal recognition of Continuing Medical Education Programme in place enabling that continuing professional development of our family doctors is of high standard even after the Fellowship examination is done.

We have the great honour and privilege to have been able to invite Professor Michael Kidd, Professor of Global Primary Care and Future Health Systems, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and Director, Centre for Future Health Systems, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, to squeeze out a week’s time from his extremely busy schedules to take up this year’s HKCFP Visiting Professorship for the University of Hong Kong.  Professor Kidd is one of our College’s long term friends and he has been most supportive towards our College development over the years and he is also one of our Honorary Fellows giving us ongoing invaluable advice to enhance the growth of the College. Professor Kidd delivered an open lecture to College Fellows and members on 3rd November on the most relevant topic to us all, “The Role of Family Medicine in Future Primary Healthcare”. The lecture was most inspiring and sparked off many interesting questions and discussions from the floor. It gave us foods for thoughts on the important role of family doctors in the current era of rapid development of artificial intelligence and advanced technology. Thank you very much Michael.

The RACGP Annual Conference this year takes place in at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, Perth, Western Australia from 21st – 23rd November. The theme of GP24 is entitled, “Reimagining health care”. For all the conference delegates, I wish you all a very fruitful conference. I would like to take this opportunity to wish the RACGP a highly successful Conference ahead.