Prof Brian Goh Kim Poh

Professor Goh is presently Head of the Department of Hepatopancreatobiliary and Transplant Surgery at Singapore General Hospital and the National Cancer Centre Singapore. He is also the Director of Singhealth Liver Transplant Service, and Surgical Director of the National Liver Transplant Program, Ministry of Health Singapore. He is a highly-experienced and high-volume subspecialty HPB/ transplant surgeon whose clinical practice focuses on the management of complex benign and malignant (cancers) conditions affecting the liver, pancreas, biliary tract and gallbladder.

As of 2025, he has performed well over 2,000 major subspecialty HPB/ transplant surgeries (>1,200 liver, >700 pancreas/ biliary, >500 recipient/ donor transplant surgeries) after completing surgical training and becoming a Singapore board-certified specialist surgeon. He is the only surgeon in Singapore certified by both the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) and Ministry of Health in abdominal(liver/kidney/pancreas) transplantation and is the current surgical director of the National Liver Transplant Program, National Organ Transplant Unit, Ministry of Health, Singapore.  He had previously worked as a surgical fellow for 2 years at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic Rochester performing numerous complex surgical procedures. He is well-recognized as an international thought leader due to his vast clinical experience and extensive research work in the field. Dr Goh has received several awards and has been an invited member to numerous international expert consensus panels.

Presently, he is one of the most experienced surgeons in Southeast-Asia for minimally-invasive/ laparoscopic HPB surgery. Since returning to Singapore in 2011 (till 2025), he has personally performed over 1,000 laparoscopic and robotic major HPB surgeries (> 630 minimally-invasive liver resections, > 270 minimally-invasive pancreas surgeries, >150 minimally-invasive major biliary procedures) as the lead surgeon and mentored/proctored over a dozen subspecialty regional colleagues in many more such procedures. He is presently widely-recognized as an international expert in minimally-invasive HPB surgery. Regionally, Dr Goh is a pioneer in advanced laparoscopic HPB surgery and is frequently invited to lecture and proctor local/regional surgeons. He pioneered robotic HPB surgery in the region in 2013 and has personally performed over 200 robotic major HPB surgeries as the main console surgeon. He is the only local robotic HPB proctor and has tutored over a dozen subspecialty colleagues in Southeast Asia in numerous robotic HPB procedures. He is also the only local HPB surgeon listed in the Intuitive Surgery (Da Vinci robotic surgery) surgeon locator and remains only one of a handful of high-volume HPB surgeons regionally who routinely performs laparoscopic or robotic surgery for highly complicated procedures such as major and anatomical hepatectomies, adult living donor transplant hepatectomy, pancreatectomies (Whipples procedure/ pancreatoduodenectomy), associated liver partition and portal vein ligation for staged hepatectomy (ALPPS), repair of bile duct injuries, resections for bile duct/ gallbladder cancers, giant liver tumors and repeat resection for recurrent cancers with a high-success rate.  

Dr Goh frequently uses transplant oncology techniques to perform complex multi-organ resections with major vascular reconstructions for borderline-resectable cancers which may be considered inoperable by other surgeons. He is also experienced in treating rare conditions such as polycystic liver disease, giant malignant and benign tumors, choledochal cyst, gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST), neuroendocrine (carcinoid) tumours and pancreatic cystic tumours such as intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN), frequently using minimally-invasive surgical techniques. He is also the Principal Investigator of the first regional clinical trial on the application of Histotripsy for liver cancers (HALT).

• Head of Department, 2022 -present
• Director of Singhealth Liver Transplant Service, 2024 - present
• Surgical Director, National Liver Transplant Program, MOH, 2024 - present
• Chief of Service, SGH campus, Singhealth-Duke-NUS Transplant Center, 2023 - present
• Chairman, Robotic Surgery, Division of Surgery and Surgical Oncology, SGH & NCCS, 2021- 2025
• Surgical Director of Liver Transplant, SingHealth-Duke-NUS Transplant Center, 2021 -2024
• Director, Surgery ACP Research and Database, 2018 -2023
• Founding member, President, Robotic Surgery Society of Singapore 2025-present
• Scientific Committee member, International Hepatopancreatobililary Association 2018-present
• Education co-chair, International Laparoscopic Liver Society, 2022 – present
• Founding member, International Laparoscopic Liver Society, 2018 - present
• Director of Research, Singhealth Duke-NUS Transplant Centre, 2019 – 2023
• Director of Solid Organ Transplant, Singhealth Duke-NUS Transplant Centre, 2019-2022
• Robotic HPB surgery lead, SGH robotic committee, 2015- present
• Co-Lead, SGH Immunology and Transplant research peak, 2019-2022
• Robotic HPB surgery, National Lead, Robotic Surgery Society of Singapore, 2017-pesent
• Founding member, Hepatopancreatobiliary Association Singapore
• Editorial Board member of over 70 peer-review medical journals

• Yahya Cohen Memorial Lecture 2023
• SGH 20 years Long service award 2021
• American College of Surgeons, International Guest Scholarship, 2019
• International Association of Surgeons, Gastroenterologists and Oncologists (IASGO) Leadership Award, 2017
• Wong Hock Boon outstanding mentor award, 2017
• Singhealth GCEO Excellence Award in research, 2017
• International Association of Surgeons, Gastroenterologists and Oncologsts (IASGO) 2016, Seoul – Teaching fellowship, 2016
• National Medical Research Coucil (NMRC) Clinical investigator salary support award, 2014-2019
• International Association of Surgeons, Gastroenterologists and Oncologists 2015 – Teaching Fellowship, 2015
• SGH Service with a Heart Award, 2015, 2023
• 70th General Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery – Travel Award 2015
• American Society of Transplant Surgeons, 11th Winter Symposium (Hollywood, FL) 2011
• SGH Fellowship award 2010/11
• SGH 10 years Long Service Award 2010

• Liver cancer (HCC) and benign liver tumors
• Pancreatic cancer
• Pancreatic cystic neoplasms (IPMN) and benign pancreatic tumors
• Gallbladder and biliary cancers/ benign tumors
• Minimally-invasive hepatopancreatobiliary surgery (laparoscopic and robotic surgery)
• Neuroendocrine neoplasms
• Gastrointestinal stromal tumor

• Internationally known for his clinical and translation research work (in the field of hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery) on liver cancer (HCC), pancreatic cancer, pancreatic cystic neoplasms (eg. intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms, solid pseudopapillary neoplasms, mucinous cystic neoplasms), gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST), neuroendocrine tumours, laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery and extended resections for borderline resectable malignancies
• Invited expert for several international consensus expert panels on laparoscopic and robotic HPB surgery and pancreatic cystic neoplasms
• Performed live demonstrations and presented his surgical technical videos on laparoscopic and robotic HPB surgery throughout the world including countries such as USA, Italy, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, China and Australia
• PI of international multi-center study group on laparoscopic and robotic liver resections involving over 45,000 patients from over 80 international centres
• Principal investigator of the HALT trial (histotripsy for liver tumors), 11M SGD philanthropic donation
• Held over SGD 90 million in grant funding as PI and coI
• Published over 550 scientific publications including over 470 PubMed-indexed articles
• Has over 17,000 citations and a H index of 68
• Stanford top 2% of world’s most-cited researchers from 2022 to 2025
• Full publication list:
  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=goh+bk
  • https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Oig7_fYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao  
• Delivered over 300 international lectures and scientific presentations world-wide