About Me

Clinician | Creator | Contrarian. Healing, storytelling, and occasional Zalsa-ing across
continents and contradictions

Hi, I’m Asad - a pediatric emergency physician, innovation strategist, and unapologetic dance-floor enthusiast.

After over a decade of training and clinical work in the US (Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital), I returned to Pakistan to reimagine emergency care at the Aga Khan University. I launched the country’s first Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowship and founded CCIT, a healthcare innovation hub that sparked hackathons, narrative medicine programs, storytelling platforms, and wellness initiatives. My goal throughout: to show that big change doesn’t always require big budgets. I also co-founded Innovly, a frugal innovation consultancy, and Zalsa, a movement-based wellness practice that blends Zumba, Salsa, and joy. 

Currently, I head Healthcare Transformation, Learning Programs, and Systems for the Evercare Group across Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, and the UAE. 

I’ve written over a hundred op-eds and essays for newspapers, blogs, and e-zines in the US and Pakistan: my work blends medicine, innovation, and identity. I’m a freelance contributor to The Express Tribune’s T Magazine, where I reflect on intersections of memoir, meaning, and systems.

My first book, An Itinerant Observer, is a collection of short stories drawn from real life - ERs, classrooms, airports, and dance floors. It’s what inspired this blog. My second book, MEDJACK: The Extraordinary Journey of an Ordinary Hack, distills years of clinical and leadership experience into case-based lessons on frugal innovation and healthcare disruption in low-resource settings.

I’m the creator of Biloongra, a children’s storytelling series that uses multilingual books to promote health literacy and spark imagination. In its newer form, Biloongra has evolved into a living lab - blending human-centered design, co-creation with children and caregivers, and even AI-assisted storytelling to shape playful and ethical models for health education.

This blog is an outlet for the stories that don’t fit in academic journals. Here, I reflect on systems, spirit, suffering, silliness, and everything in between. It’s also a community space: many of the Narrative Medicine stories here are co-curated with people who’ve lived, worked, and wondered alongside me.

Come for the chaos. Stay for the questions...

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