Dr Tay did his undergraduate medical education at NUS, graduating with MBBS in 1988. He subsequently obtained his surgical fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Royal College of Surgeons of Glasgow in 1995. He completed his Advanced Surgical Training in General Surgery in April 1998.
Dr Tay did his subspecialty training under the tutelage of two world renowned surgeons. He was awarded a Traveling Fellowship Scholarship from the Royal College of Surgeons of Glasgow to understudy Prof Alfred Cushieri in Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, Scotland for advance laparoscopic surgery. Dr Tay was also awarded the Health Manpower Development Program (HMDP) scholarship allowing him to spend a year training with Prof Bernard Launois at the Pontchaillou Hospital, University de Rennes, Brittany, France for Hepatobiliary Surgery.
Dr Tay’s areas of expertise are in hepatopancreatobiliary (HPB) and advanced laparoscopic (Minimally Invasive Surgery, MIS) surgery with particular emphasis on difficult gallbladder and bile duct operations, major liver resections utilizing the French Techniques, the latest techniques in pancreas resectional operations for cancers of the of pancreas, and Living Donor Liver Transplant (LDLT).
At 39years old, Dr Tay was selected by the Ministry of Health to be the youngest Chief of Surgery in Singapore, heading the Department of Surgery at Changi General Hospital.
He is now a consultant surgeon in private practice and is the visiting consultant to selected restructured hospitals in the Ministry of Health.
Dr Tay is also an integral part of the Living Donor Liver Transplant program at Gleneagles Hospital, together with Dr KC Tan at the Asian Centre for Liver Disease and Transplantation. To date, Dr Tay and Dr Tan have performed more than 120 liver transplants together with survival rates of greater than 80%, putting the program on par with many of the best centres in the world.
