A blank Wikipedia page hardly stirs ambition, but for Dr. Robert Hegele it is a fitting metaphor for discovery.
As a medical student, he realized that the most inspiring physicians weren't just treating patients, they were filling the empty pages of medicine's collective knowledge.
"They were starting with a limited understanding and building something," he explained. "Since then, I've been asking, how do we fill the page with knowledge?'"
For Hegele, the answer has always been research, which he calls "an extension of my stethoscope."
This dual identity, being both a clinician and scientist, has defined his career. And now, his contributions are being recognized with a prestigious national honour.
Hegele is among the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame's 2026 inductees, joining the ranks of his own medical heroes, including Drs. Frederick Banting and Charles Best.
"I never imagined I'd be in their company," he said. "These are the people I grew up reading about, the ones who shaped how we understand medicine."
Born in Canada to immigrant parents who prized education and academic pursuits, Hegele was intensely interested in music and playing the piano as a child, even completing a degree at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music.
It was a high school teacher who first inspired him to consider science, recognizing and encouraging his curiosity.
After earning a medical degree at the University of Toronto in 1981, he pursued specialty training in internal medicine and endocrinology.
His introduction to biomedical research happened quite serendipitously, during a first-year internship at Toronto General Hospital.
The first patient he studied - a young woman in her early 20s - was living with a rare genetic disorder, considered fatal at the time. After receiving an experimental treatment, she remarkably got better.
"It was the first time I had a taste of that type of impact," said Hegele. "It showed me that by being focused and asking the right questions, I could help improve people's lives."
Now in her sixties, the patient remains in his care four decades later, one of the longest-living people with the condition.
With a growing interest in research, Hegele completed postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University in New York and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Salt Lake City, focusing on heart disease, cholesterol and human genetics.
Since joining Western University in 1997, he has become one of Canada's most influential clinician-scientists. A Distinguished University Professor and the Jacob J. Wolfe Distinguished Medical Research Chair in Human Gene Function, he has published more than 1,000 papers and collaborated with thousands of colleagues worldwide.
'All starts with the patients'
His lab, the London Regional Genomics Centre, has developed genetic tests now covered by OHIP, allowing patients to be screened for inherited high cholesterol at no cost. He has also been the first to bring breakthrough cholesterol-lowering medications to Canada through clinical trials.
In total, his lab has discovered the genetic basis of 14 human diseases.
In recognition of these extraordinary contributions, Hegele was the first Canadian recipient of the Familial Hypercholesterolemia Foundation's Pioneer Award and the National Lipid Association's W. Virgil Brown Distinguished Achievement Award. Most recently, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada.
Looking to the future, he considers gene editing to be the next frontier in medicine, powered by the Nobel Prize-winning technology CRISPR-Cas9. He believes the technology could one day make lifelong pills or injections obsolete for people with inherited lipid disorders.
But even as science accelerates, Hegele insists on holding close the relationships that began it all.
He still sees patients weekly and answers their calls directly, even phoning in prescriptions himself. He says some of his most influential research projects were sparked by patient questions, including the discovery of the gene behind familial partial lipodystrophy type 2.
"It all starts with the patients," he said. "The last thing I'll give up is my clinic. I'm fundamentally a doctor - I took the Hippocratic Oath to help people."
