Shafi Ahmed is a surgeon, teacher, futurist, innovator, entrepreneur and an evangelist in augmented and virtual reality. Shafi was born in 1969 in Sylhet District, Bangladesh, and came to the United Kingdom as a child. He studied medicine at King's College Hospital School of Medicine and completed his basic and higher surgical training in North East London in general surgery. He obtained his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Edinburgh and Ireland in 2007–2008 and was appointed as a Consultant General, Laparoscopic and Colorectal surgeon to the Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew's Hospitals, Barts Health in 2007. He is an Associate Dean at Barts and the London Medical school and is an elected member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England where he leads the international surgical training programme. In May 2017, Shafi was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Bradford where he was invited to take part in The Cantor Technology Lecture Series.

Shafi has been working on new technologies enhancing surgical education globally. His online videos have been watched thousands of times earning him the accolade of being the most watched surgeon in human history. His company Virtual Medics has developed the use of wearable technology in education and clinical practice. This has allowed the development of a web-based platform to stream live and interactive teaching. On 14 April 2016, he performed the world's first virtual reality operation recorded and streamed live in 360 degrees which was watched by 55000 people in 142 countries. On 9 December 2016, he performed the world's first live operation using Snapchat Spectacles where he trained 200 medical students and surgical trainees. The operation has been viewed over 100,000 times.

His Virtual Reality company, Medical Realities has launched the world’s first learning and training module in VR.

He is also Vice-President of Proshanti, a local charity community project to set up a health programme in Bangladesh and teaches and trains surgeons in Dhaka, where he supports Rahetid, a postgraduate surgical training centre.