Keynote Speakers

PhD. Linus Olson

Linus Olson, PhD, M.Med Tech & Sci, Karolinska Institutet, is currently the Deputy Principal Investigator of TRAC project and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Medical Cooling Sweden AB Project and one of the inventors of the PCM mattress – a simple, safe method for therapeutic hypothermia with a global applicability to treat HIE, hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy and injuries.
 
Dr. Olson has spent most of his research career at Karolinska Institutet performing studies in the field of neonatology, to which he has made substantial contribution. More recently, he has been focusing on public health science, particularly the field of multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria.
 
Dr. Olson has been working on standard whole-body cooling models, which have been used throughout Europe, using a combination of water cushions that have circulating water within it. This model is the foundation for his scientific research with a new cooling method based on PCM (Phase Changing Material) to accomplish safe and simple cooling without the use of water and electricity. He and his supervisors have worked to introduce this new cooling tool to researchers to evaluate the use of this method in paediatric patients. Together with a research team of Dr. Nicola Robertson (University of London), Dr. Olson has verified his research hypotheses through experiments on animals (pigs) at Karolinska Institutet. He then performed the experiments in clinical settings at the paediatric department of three different hospitals in Sweden and Vietnam. Along with the Medical Cooling Sweden AB project, he has conducted studies of different types of PCMs at various body temperatures, from 20 oC to 43oC. Various types of PCM have been tested; many Glauber salts as well as various PCM standards have also been used and verified at these temperatures to validate their usability in critical locations.
 
Together with Calmark Sweden AB in Vietnam, Dr. Olson has also been involved in studies in infants to verify LDH as a biomarker for early detection of diseases in infants, and to identify infants in need of NICU care. This research is being continued.
 
Recently he has also been involved in studies looking into the control of communicable diseases in both Vietnam and Sweden, where some results indicated antibiotic resistance problems, especially the CRE problems occurring in Vietnam with a disease burden of nearly 50% children in Vietnam’s paediatric hospitals, and 40% of children receiving adult care. This marks the point where he first started his career as a biomedical engineer/ researcher at Stockholm medical experiment center for infectious diseases.
 
During the time Dr. Olson worked as an engineer/researcher at Karolinska Hospital, the National Hospital of Paediatrics, and as a software engineer at KnowIT AB and at both Datex-Ohmeda AB and Siemens Elema AB, he has joined and worked with patients' health systems in a variety of ways. At Nice AB, he is the chief engineer, who is responsible for building a well-functioning (not operated) system that synchronizes data from real-time devices into his patients' medical records.
 
From 2007 to 2015, during these 9 years of cooperation with universities in Vietnam, Dr. Olson visited various hospitals and organizations in Vietnam, especially in Hanoi, and he has established long-term collaborations in the field of paediatrics. He also worked as a representative of Karolinska Institutet at Hanoi Medical University. He was appointed by the Swedish Embassy as the representative for student recruitment in the field of medicine. Moreover, he is now one of the representatives of the TRAC (Training and Research Academic Collaboration) project in collaboration with five Swedish Universities (Karolinska Institutet, Uppsala University, Umeå, Linköping, and Göteborg) and three universities in Vietnam (Hanoi Medical University, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Ho Chi Minh City and NHP / RICH University)
 
Dr. Olson will continue these three lines of work and continue his research to improve the treatment of infants and children in need, as well as the research on antibiotic resistance and prevention against infection of Gram-negative bacteria in hospitalised infants and children. 

Sponsors

Related Courses