SABA AKBAR
Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Saba has had a progressive career starting her journey as a nursing student at the Aga Khan University, in 2011 and going on to various roles including Surgical Nurse and Nursing Instructor. Her passion for acquiring knowledge led her to complete a Master of Business Administration in Health and Hospital Management in Karachi.
In 2016, Saba received an International Scholarship from Aga Khan Foundation, to pursue a postgraduate degree in Biomedical and Health Informatics from the University of North Carolina, USA. Following her outstanding academic and professional portfolio, she was further awarded a Research Excellence Scholarship to undertake a PhD in Health Innovation at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her PhD project investigates the effects of automating nursing decision support systems.
How did you go about accomplishing your achievements? What inspired you?
As a novice nurse back in Pakistan, through my day-to-day work, I realised the importance of health care technology innovations and their potential impact on wider populations. That appreciation became a driving force for me, and I started looking for academic programs in health informatics.
I strongly believe in the phrase ‘when there is a will, there is a way.’ This belief and my never-ending passion led to two Masters's degrees and a PhD in the field of health informatics and innovations.
I believe in destiny (if it’s meant to be) but also in hard work. I pushed myself very hard to get out of my comfort zone and have been constantly seeking opportunities to learn and achieve more. I absolutely enjoy learning new skills, but my biggest teacher is my mistakes and failures. In all this, my husband has been my biggest cheerleader and support throughout. He helps me stay grounded and gives me confidence when I have self-doubts.
What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
In the early days of my career, the field of Health Informatics wasn’t very common or popular. I was hoping to meet more people with my background (i.e., Nursing) who may have acquired education and/or experience in the same or similar fields, but it was very hard to find any. Hence, it was quite challenging to take the risk of breaking new grounds and convince myself and the people around me that it was worth it.
The other biggest challenge was to convince my family to accept the scholarship offer and move overseas on my own. I am so grateful to my parents to allow me to take what was considered a huge step forward in my family.
It hasn’t been an easy journey, but I have been lucky enough to have the resilience to keep moving forward regardless.
What has been the impact of your achievements on family, or society or community?
My work at the University of North Carolina, and Macquarie University, involves ground-breaking innovations in digital health and artificial intelligence for both patients and healthcare providers. I am passionate about creating innovative solutions to enhance patient safety in clinical spaces. For example, I have designed an automated system that gathers information from comprehensive patients’ notes and generates specific assessment data in real-time, for medical practitioners, saving an immense amount of time and effort required for manually processing similar data. This project is aimed at reducing patient harm and increasing patient safety. This is a huge leap forward in utilising automation technologies to the advantage of healthcare providers as well as ensuring patient safety.
If you were to name one woman who is a source of inspiration to you,….
My best friend and an amazing woman, Samreen, inspires me every day. Even though we are the same age (well technically, she is younger than me), I have learned heaps from her. Then my PhD supervisor, Professor Farah Magrabi, is someone I look up to every day. She is brilliant, kind, and compassionate
What advice would you like to give to other members of the Jamat?
Follow your heart!! Do what you really enjoy and what truly satisfies you and you will be amazed by your potential and what you are destined to achieve.
