Dr. Ahmed is a physician, non-fiction author, broadcast media commentator, and a noted international speaker in both her fields of medicine and journalism. Her articles, columns, and opinions have been published in over sixteen news outlets including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator (in both Australia and Britain), Al Jazeera, The Independent, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, The Daily Caller, Newsday, The Telegraph, The Daily Beast, the World Policy Journal, Fox News Opinion, CNN Opinion, and many others.

A graduate of the University of Nottingham, England, Dr. Ahmed has practiced subspecialty medicine in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She continues her practice in New York. Currently a triple board-certified pulmonologist and sleep disorders specialist, Dr. Qanta Ahmed is an Honorary Professor at School of Health and Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, and Honorary Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Science and Technology in Haifa, Israel. She is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

In December 2015 she was naturalized as an American. She lives in New York where she continues to write and practice medicine.