[1] Chan attended Raffles Institution before moving to the United Kingdom to study medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School.
He returned to Singapore after his studies, becoming a lecturer and consultant pediatrician at the University of Singapore, but returned to the United Kingdom in 1974 to study Von Willebrand's disease at the University of London Institute of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Chan moved to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1976, where he remained as a senior clinical lecturer and consultant pediatrician until 1994.
[2] He was also active in the field of race relations, serving as an advisor to the Home Secretary and then as a Commissioner for the Commission for Racial Equality between 1990 and 1995, and as a member of the Sentencing Panel from 1999.
He was a committed Christian and elder of the Liverpool Chinese Gospel Church, undertaking various charitable works, for which he was appointed MBE in 1991.