Ahmed attended Chadwell Heath High School (now Chadwell Heath Academy) before attending the Redbridge technical college.
From 1988 to 1993, he studied medicine at King's College Hospital School of Medicine. As the elected President of the Medical and Dental Society, he helped introduce medical ethics into the curriculum.
During his surgical training in London, he undertook a period of research at The Royal London Hospital and the Queen Mary University of London. In 2010, he obtained a PhD with a thesis entitled "The role of microarray profiling in predicting outcome in patients with colorectal cancer".[4]
Ahmed has been awarded four honorary PhDs (Honoris Causa) from Udabol University Bolivia, SIISDET Colombia, the University of Peru of Science and Informatics and EXIBED, Spain.[citation needed]
In 2017, he was appointed as an honorary professor at The University of Bradford and awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Medicine in 2019.[5]
His main clinical interest is colorectal cancer, and he performs surgery for primary and recurrent disease as well as multi-visceral resections.
He has pioneered single incision laparoscopic colorectal surgery (virtual scarless surgery) and also works with liver surgeons to perform simultaneous laparoscopic liver and bowel resections for cancer. His other clinical interest is advanced stage 3/4 endometriosis, performing laparoscopic surgery with gynaecologists. This has led to the development and recognition of a national centre for endometriosis. In addition, he has specialist experience in complex abdominal wall hernias and reconstruction.[3]
From 2010 to 2015, Ahmed was the lead clinician and multi-disciplinary team lead for colorectal cancer at Barts Health NHS Trust. He was also a CQC specialist advisor in general surgery.[citation needed]
Ahmed was the Associate Dean for Barts and the London undergraduate medical students at The Royal London Hospital from 2010 to 2019 and was the lead for surgery. He was programme director for core surgical trainees for North East London 2012–2013 and Tutor in Surgery for the Royal London Hospital 2011–2013. He teaches innovation and digital transformation for surgeons at Harvard Medical School and Imperial College London.[9]
From 2013 to 2019, Ahmed was elected to the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.[10] He had numerous roles and led the International Surgical Training Programme. He was part of the Cancer 2020, 5 Year Forward View Taskforce 2015.[11] He is a member of the court of examiners and is an international convenor of the MRCS for Bangladesh.[12]
Ahmed is the module lead for an innovative new course at Barts and the London Medical School which aims to teach the third year medical students about future medicine and how to generate ideas to improve clinical care.[13][1] The students are taught by digital health innovators and those involved in Medtech from the UK and US.
Ahmed has been working on new technologies to enhance surgical education globally. His online videos have been watched hundreds of thousands of times, earning him the accolade of the most-watched surgeon in human history.[14]
He aims to teach surgery and surgical processes to thousands of students at a time using VR technology.[15]
Ahmed's company Virtual Medics developed the use of wearable technology in education and clinical practice. This has allowed the development of a web-placed platform to stream live and interactive teaching.
In May 2014, using Google Glass, he performed and streamed a live operation to 14 thousand students across 132 countries and 1100 cities.[16]
Ahmed is the co-founder of Medical Realities, a group offering surgical training products, specialising in virtual reality, augmented reality and serious games.[17] Through Medical Realities, he aims to provide tutorials in a modular format to teaching hospitals around the world. This will be made accessible to students and surgical trainees.
On 14 April 2016, in collaboration with Barts Health, Medical Realities and Mativision, he performed the world's first virtual reality operation recorded and streamed live in 360 degrees.[8][17][18][19] This was viewed by 55,000 people in 140 countries and 4000 cities and reached 4.6 million people on Twitter.
On 9 December 2016, he performed the world's first live operation using Snapchat Spectacles where he trained 200 medical students and surgical trainees, which was covered by Time magazine, and BBC.[31][32][33] The operation has been viewed over 100,000 times.[34]
He is a non-executive director of Medic creations, GPDQ and Imera.[35]
He is the chair of the GIANT (Global Innovation and New Technologies) Health Event in London and also the chair of the Webit Health conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, which showcases startups, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship.[36][37]
Ahmed is a three time TEDx speaker and four times Wired Health and international keynote speaker, and a member of the faculty at Exponential Medicine, Singularity University.
On 15 March 2017, Ahmed delivered the Cantor Technology Lecture at the University of Bradford and also delivered the public lecture to open the Digital Health Enterprise Zone.[47]
He is Vice-President of Proshanti, a local charity community project to set up a health programme in Bangladesh, He is an advisor to Beani Bazaar Cancer Hospital, Bangladesh.[48] He also teaches and trains surgeons in Dhaka, Bangladesh where he is the Dean for education at Rahetid, a postgraduate surgical training centre.[49]
Banerjea, Ayan, Shafi Ahmed, Rebecca E. Hands, Fei Huang, Xia Han, Peter M. Shaw, Roger Feakins, Stephen A. Bustin, and Sina Dorudi. "Colorectal cancers with microsatellite instability display mRNA expression signatures characteristic of increased immunogenicity." Molecular cancer 3, no. 1 (2004): 1-11. doi:10.1186/1476-4598-3-21
Kazemian, Hassan B., and Shafi Ahmed. "Comparisons of machine learning techniques for detecting malicious webpages." Expert Systems with Applications 42, no. 3 (2015): 1166-1177. doi:10.1186/1476-4598-3-21
Shafi, Ahmed MA, Safwan A. Shaikh, Manasi M. Shirke, Sashini Iddawela, and Amer Harky. "Cardiac manifestations in COVID‐19 patients—A systematic review." Journal of cardiac surgery 35, no. 8 (2020): 1988-2008.
Jelf Medal 1990: Awarded by the Principal of the college for the best academic and social achievement in the medical faculty of King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry[citation needed]
W.G. Oakley Prize in Diabetes 1992: Awarded for an original dissertation entitled "Diabetic Neuroarthropathy: the Pathogenesis of the Charcot joint"[citation needed]
British Journal of Surgery Prize 2004: Awarded at the Association of Coloproctology, Edinburgh 2004 for best oral presentation "Prediction of Lymph Node Status in Colorectal Cancer by Microarray Profiling"[citation needed]
Silver Scalpel Prize 2015: Awarded by the Association of Surgeons of Training for Best Surgical Trainer in the UK[50][51]
2016: Winner of the Islamic Society of Britain/British Telecom Innovation Business and Skills Award[citation needed]
Barts Health Heroes Awards: 2013 - 2017 Highly commended for Relentlessly improving and innovating for patient safety[citation needed]
2017: Shortlisted for Digital Pioneer Awards of London for Innovation[52]
Selected in the British Bangladeshi Power and Inspiration 100 and awarded the honour of the British Bangladeshi Person of the Year 2017[53][54][non-primary source needed]
Chairman's Prize for Outstanding Contribution to HealthTech at the Asian Tech Awards 2017[55][56]
Webit global digital health innovation award 2017[citation needed]
^Karim, Mohammed Abdul (October 2009). "British Bangladeshi Who's Who 2009". CiteSeer PennState College of Information Sciences and Technology. British Bangla Media Group. p. 17. Retrieved 25 April 2023.