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Waheed Arian
Arian Teleheal, Founder
Speaker Bio
Dr Waheed Arian was born into Afghanistan conflict and went on to study at Cambridge and Harvard universities. He is now an emergency doctor in the UK National Health Service (NHS), author of best-selling memoir In The Wars and founder of the pioneering telemedicine charity Arian Teleheal, which works directly with clinicians on the ground in low-resource and war-torn countries.
He is the CEO of Arian Wellbeing, an innovative digital mental health company that provides culturally and language appropriate comprehensive mental health support to organisational staff and communities, including hard to reach diverse communities, in the UK and globally, in partnership with government, healthcare, non-profit and for-profit organisations.
As an adviser, he helps governments and global organisations such as the UN, WHO and others with the development of their healthcare and education systems that can address inequalities. Dr Arian is an NHS Innovation Mentor and was appointed in 2019 to the WHO Roster of Digital Health Experts. He is recognised as a UNESCO Global Hope Hero and a UN Global Goals Goalkeeper for promoting Sustainable Development Goals. He has been a signatory to the WHO First World Report on Health of Refugees and Migrants.
Dr Arian was named UK Doctor of the Year in 2021 and chosen by The Times as a Person of the Year. In 2022 he was given The World Citizen Award from Turkish Radio and Television. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2023 and was awarded Honorary Fellowship by Cambridge University in 2024 for his pioneering services in medicine.