Zohaib Akhtar MD MPH
Bit about me...
.
I intersect healthcare, technology and business strategy with an approach for innovation. Outside that, you’ll often find me cycling, occasionally taking photos, and mostly traveling.
Expertise & Approach
Leadership & Strategy
I am a part of Northwestern Kellogg EMBA Program focusing on healthcare, strategy and finance. Simultaneously, I invest in interesting solutions and strategize to realize them.
Health Ventures
Technology plays a critical role in closing gaps in care. At Johns Hopkins University, I led the development of Dropby — a system that leverages real-time data & analytics for personalized individual well-being.
In Denmark, I introduced a novel solution to prevent unplanned extubation in underweight babies in neonatal ICU.
Innovation & Design
I have always been fascinated by Scandinavia’s design and innovation ecosystem—a region where creativity meets functionality.
I moved to Denmark to understand how innovation is shaped before it becomes reality—from LEGO and IKEA to Novo Nordisk and Bang & Olufsen, exploring the principles that drive world-class design and business innovation.
Health Outcomes
At Cleveland Clinic’s Anesthesiology Institute, I worked to advance intraoperative care with a focus on improving clinical outcomes. There, I helped introduce hypothermia prevention protocols during surgery, which enhanced patient safety and recovery.
At Johns Hopkins Medicine, I played a key role in implementing a new clinical operations model for cancer treatment by facilitating a multidisciplinary clinic where multiple physicians evaluate patients simultaneously. This innovation reduced diagnosis-to-treatment time from months to just days, significantly improving oncology care at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Later as we transitioned from 2024 to 2025, this multidisciplinary oncology approach saved my mother’s life.
Zohaib Akhtar MD MPH
![[CITYPNG.COM]HD Grey Linkedin IN Icon Text Symbol Sign PNG - 2000x2000.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/29ca6d_018f4bb4ac774b34b8012069d33c0479~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_36,h_36,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5BCITYPNG_COM%5DHD%20Grey%20Linkedin%20IN%20Icon%20Text%20Symbol%20Sign%20PNG%20-%202000x2000.png){kind=small}
Citations 2358
h-index 8
i10-index 6
(Tap graph for Research and Publications)
 Cleveland Clinic |
|---|
 Peabody Library Baltimore |
 Cleveland, Ohio |
 Islamabad, Pakistan |
 Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD |
 Aarhus Museum of Arts |
 Copenhagen, Denmark |
 The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health |
 Johns Hopkins Medicine |
 Chicago, IL |
 Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
 Kellogg School of Management |
Camera
& me
Some shots of interesting people.
Behind the Innovations
The problem, the impact.
Even a brief drop in core body temperature during surgery can lead to serious complications—poor blood clotting, slower healing, increased infections, and extreme discomfort, particularly for older or frail patients. The root cause lies in how anesthesia disrupts the body’s ability to regulate temperature, combined with the cold environment of operating rooms. Traditional solutions focus on warming patients during surgery, but by then, hypothermia has already set in. Why not prevent it from happening in the first place?
The conventional way for a patient who might be at risk for cancer involves visiting multiple doctors to evaluate the potential cancer, determine the type, and decide on the best treatment plan. Patients often jump from one specialty to another—from medicine to surgery to radiation—which is not only mentally stressful and exhausting but also time-sensitive for a disease where every moment counts. In some places, this process can take months, and even at world-leading hospitals like Johns Hopkins, the average time for breast cancer treatment to begin is 29 days.
But what if all the specialists could see the patient on the same day, at the same time? It made the process 3 times faster!
What if we could tackle isolation while uncovering new links between social behavior and health? Dropby was a groundbreaking public health innovation built through a multidisciplinary collaboration across medicine, public health, data science, business, and engineering. Combining proactive prevention strategies with cutting-edge technology, Dropby fostered real-world connections, prioritized privacy, and integrated health insights. This approach aimed to transform how we understand and address mental health and well-being.
CareFold is an innovative solution born from the Biomedical Design Fellowship, designed to address the critical challenge of unplanned extubations (UEs) in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Developed through a multidisciplinary effort involving neonatologists, engineers, public health experts, and parents, CareFold enables safer transfers, reduces UEs, and empowers parents to engage in essential skin-to-skin bonding with their preterm infants.
I’ve been one of many professionals in the U.S. who faced uncertainty due to visa constraints. Like me, many don’t realize they can self-petition for a green card through pathways like EB-1, EB-2 (NIW), or O-1 — without employer sponsorship.
The process itself isn’t overly complicated, but you need to understand what your contribution is, why it matters, and then present it clearly and convincingly. I navigated this process on my own, and it was tough at times, especially without any solid examples to follow.
So I’m sharing my own application and hope it helps.
© 2024 Zohaib Akhtar. All Rights Reserved.
