Press release -
Laerdal Medical announces acquisition of SIMCharacters
STAVANGER, NORWAY (FEB 13th, 2025)
Laerdal Medical, a global leader in healthcare education, training, and therapy solutions, is pleased to announce the acquisition of SIMCharacters, an Austrian-based company renowned for its advanced high-fidelity simulators that focus on neonatal care. This acquisition marks a significant step in Laerdal’s mission of helping save lives by providing cutting-edge medical training solutions to help improve quality of care. Having worked closely with SIMCharacters as a distributor, Laerdal is thrilled to now welcome them to the organization.
With the acquisition, SIMCharacters will become part of the global Laerdal organization – providing opportunity for Laerdal to further strengthen its position in the healthcare simulation space, in particular neonatology, and pediatric care.
SIMCharacters’ high-fidelity neonatal simulator will enhance Laerdal’s current baby simulation portfolio, offering healthcare professionals, and educational institutions an even broader suite of tools to improve healthcare training.
Alf-Christian Dybdahl, CEO of Laerdal Medical, said: "We are excited to officially welcome SIMCharacters to the Laerdal team. Their expertise, and innovative products, including neonatal simulators Paul, Emily, and Emma, perfectly complement our existing baby simulation offerings.”
The SIMCharacters' team, led by neonatologist Dr. Jens Schwindt, will join Laerdal as part of this exciting journey. Dr. Schwindt’s extensive experience and network in neonatology will be invaluable as Laerdal continues to innovate and improve healthcare training outcomes for professionals caring for the most vulnerable of patients – premature and term newborns.
“My journey into neonatal simulation began in 2006 in Stavanger when Laerdal introduced its first newborn high-fidelity simulator. Now, joining forces with Laerdal feels like coming full circle. Our entire team of engineers, hardware and software developers, special effects designers, neonatologists, and neonatal nurses, is delighted to become a part of Laerdal and together improve the quality of care jointly and sustainably for critically ill preterm and newborn infants,” Schwindt explains.
Dybdahl concluded: "We look forward to achieving great things together, and we are confident that this acquisition will benefit not only both companies but healthcare professionals, and their patients globally. Please join us in welcoming SIMCharacters to Laerdal."
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About Laerdal Medical
Laerdal is dedicated to our mission of helping save lives. Laerdal Medical is a world leader in healthcare education and resuscitation training that uses immersive technologies and data-centric insights to increase survival and improve healthcare quality. We empower our heroes/life savers, and healthcare workers, to help them save more lives. Improving the quality of care is part of our mission, to help save more lives. And we have established the goal to help save one million more lives. Every year. By 2030. However, we can’t do this alone. This is a shared goal of the Laerdal Group. A group of companies that develops healthcare-related solutions and programs focused on a common mission to help save lives, together with our Partners. The Laerdal Group is composed of Laerdal Medical, Laerdal Global Health, Million Lives Fund and Laerdal Foundation. Laerdal is a global company in 26 countries worldwide, 27 including Austria. For more information, visit www.laerdal.com.
About SIMCharacters
SIMCharacters - High Emotion Simulation was founded in Vienna, Austria in 2012. The company was established with an interdisciplinary team comprising neonatologists and neonatal nursing staff, biomedical engineers, hardware and software developers, and special-effects designers. The aim was to develop highly realistic preterm and newborn simulators that enable neonatal team training at the highest level. The first product, the preterm baby simulator “Paul”, was introduced in 2018 and is now in use in over 150 neonatal units worldwide. For more information, please visit www.simcharacters.com
