Shafi Ahmed

Consultant Surgeon

Shafi Ahmed is a consultant general, laparoscopic and colorectal surgeon appointed in 2007 to the Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew's Hospital within Barts Health NHS Trust. Born in Sylhet in 1969, he studied medicine at King's College Hospital Medical School, graduating in 1993, and later completed doctoral research in the genetics of colorectal cancer. In May 2014 he live-streamed an operation through Google Glass to 13,000 viewers in 115 countries; in April 2016 he performed the first operation streamed live in 360-degree virtual reality; and in October 2017 he connected surgeons in London and Mumbai during bowel cancer surgery through Microsoft HoloLens. He co-founded the medical education company Medical Realities and introduced the Barts X Medicine programme, embedding entrepreneurship in the medical curriculum. Elected to the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2014 and to the first NHS Assembly in 2019, he holds professorships at Imperial College London, University College London and the University of Bradford, and won the Silver Scalpel award in 2015 and an NHS70 Parliamentary Award in 2018.