August 29, 2014By Lance Baily

Tore Laerdal TEDx Talk "Collaboration Breeds Innovation"

tedx laerdal

Tore Laerdal, Chairman of Laerdal Medical gave this TEDx talk last year in Stavanger on how “Collaboration Breeds Innovation” and opened his presentation by sharing how his life was saved by his father at the age of two after he drowned in a lake. As a plastics toy manufacturer, Tore believes this personal experience of life-saving motivated his father Åsmund S. Lærdal to create the resusci-anne, the worlds leading CPR training manikin which has estimated to save more than 2,000,000 lives. Watch this inspiring presentation to see why Collaboration does indeed breed innovation.


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From TEDx:

Tore Laerdal is Chairman of Laerdal Medical, a Norwegian family owned company that since modern lifesaving techniques were developed in 1960, has been a leading supplier of training material and therapeutic equipment for acute medicine.

Tore Laerdal is also Executive Director of the Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine. The Foundation has earmarked significant funding for practically oriented MDG 4 and MDG 5 research projects. In recent years, Mr Laerdal has turned his full focus to global health challenges, and established Laerdal Global Health, a not for profit company with the sole purpose of providing highly affordable and culturally sensitive training and therapeutic solutions to help reduce maternal and newborn mortality in low resource settings. For this purpose Laerdal Global Health has partnered with USAID, NIH, Save the Children, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others in the Helping Babies Breathe alliance and the Survive & Thrive alliance. Furthermore, Laerdal Global Health has established the Day of Birth Alliance with Jhpiego and the Center for Bioengineering, Innovation and Design at the Johns Hopkins University. Mr Laerdal serves as Chairman of the Board of two external research foundations in Norway. He holds an MSc degree from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, and has received an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the University in Hertfordshire in the UK. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)


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Mama Natalie



mama natalie birthing simulator

Tore concluded his talk speaking about his own “aha” moments when he visited Africa and learned of the thousands of preventable newborn deaths taking place there — to which lead to the development of the Mama Natalie. An extremely affordable birthing simulator, the device is now used throughout the world to train healthcare teams for the birthing scenario in low resource environments.

MamaNatalie birthing simulator that comes with NeoNatalie helps you create realistic training scenarios easily. It has been designed to facilitate an engaging role play that will make the learning sessions memorable and efficient. MamaNatalie is a birthing simulator that makes it easy to create very compelling simulations of complex or normal birthing scenarios. It is strapped onto the operator, who takes the role of the mother, and manually controls the training scenario and the following features:

  • Bleeding Positioning and delivery of the baby
  • Delivery of placenta
  • Fetal heart sounds
  • Cervix landmark
  • Urine bladder cathetherization
  • Uterine massage
  • Uterine compression

Purchase provides donation: For each MamaNatalie purchased through Laerdal Medical, an additional MamaNatalie is being donated to low-resource countries through Laerdal Global Health and the Helping Mothers Survive initiative!

Learn more about the history of Laerdal here, the Mama Natalie here, and then watch more great TEDx events here.


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