In Memorium: Dr. Hude Quan

It is with great sadness that we share the passing of Dr. Hude Quan on February 2, 2026, after four and a half years of treatment for cholangiocarcinoma. Hude was a highly regarded and globally recognized epidemiologist, as well as a valued friend and colleague to many within Hypertension Canada.

Hude made a global impact through his work validating ICD-11 coding and in forming and leading the WHO Collaborating Centre for Classification, Terminologies and Standards. He also founded and served as the inaugural director of the Centre for Health Informatics at the University of Calgary and was a director of Alberta’s Strategies for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Data and Research Services Team.

Within the hypertension community, Hude was a central figure, alongside Norm Campbell, Finlay McAlister, Karen Tu, and Brenda Hemmelgarn, in developing a national hypertension surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation program to track hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control rates between 2006 and 2010. This system enabled the annual Hypertension Canada recommendations program to target implementation efforts toward identified care gaps.

In recognition of his contributions, Hude received the Hypertension Canada Senior Investigator Award (2017) and the Hypertension Canada Certificate of Excellence (2014) for outstanding work in hypertension surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation. He also received the Dr. Harold N. Segall Award of Merit (2017) from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. Hude was deeply passionate about seeing epidemiological data translated into meaningful improvements in population health.

One of Hude’s major initiatives was the validation and refinement of physician billing data to assess hypertension prevalence, forming a linkable database of more than 3.5 million Canadians living with hypertension. Developed in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada, this initiative helped lay the groundwork for the Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System, which continues to track non-communicable disease diagnoses and outcomes nationally.

Hude’s professional legacy will continue through the many students he mentored, the collaborators he inspired, and the lasting impact of his work on population health and hypertension research. More detailed information and an opportunity to contribute to a studentship in Hudes name is in the following link ( https://engage.ucalgary.ca/HudeQuan).

Robin Walker

Norm Campbell