Tom Wilmot established the first Ear, Nose and Throat service in Ulster outside Belfast, in the west of the province, thus showing that medical innovations and services can be developed outside Belfast, the great urban centre with its comparatively huge hospitals. 

Thomas James Wilmot was originally English and when young the family moved around a lot. He obtained his medical qualifications from the University of London, then made the move to Northern Ireland where he was based at Omagh, in the Tyrone County Hospital. There were no ENT facilities in the hospital at all, and he set himself to correcting this, staring with an audiology unit. Eventually he would be able to reverse the then usual practice, that specialists or consultants would be found only, or certainly mostly, in Belfast, and they would travel out of town. He was eventually send his staff’s expertise to Belfast and other cities to conduct clinics there. 

He was President of the otology section (matters to do with the structure, function, and pathology of the ear) of the Royal Society of Medicine in London, the first Irish-based doctor to be so. In 1981 he was elected President of the Irish Otolaryngology Society. (Otolaryngology concerns the ears, nose, throat, and related structures of the head and neck.) He was a keen and talented sportsman, especially boxing, when he was younger, later archery and fishing. Due to his keenness for the latter he chose to be interred in a churchyard near to one of favourite fisheries.

Born:	5 June 1920
Died:	31 March 2011