Clinical and Technical Advisory Board

Dr. Stine Lund is a paediatrician with extensive experience in global reproductive and child health. Her area of special interest is health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa where she for the last decades have worked for numerous organisations including Danida (Danish International Development Agency) and as an independent consultant.

Academically Dr. Stine Lund holds a PhD degree and is affiliated with the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark with a focus on conducing randomized controlled trials in Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Dr. Stine Lund has extensive experience with innovative use of mobile phone solutions to improve maternal and child health in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to being one of the primary drivers behind the development of the Safe Delivery App she has also developed the The Wired Mothers concept, which is a SMS based system that links women to health systems throughout pregnancy and early childhood.

Bjarke Lund Sørensen is PhD, consultant OB-GYN and has worked as associate professor in International Reproductive Health at Clinical Institute and Centre for Innovative Medical Technology, University of Southern Denmark.

For a decade Dr. Sørensen has worked to improve the quality of Basic Emergency Obstetric care in Low Income Countries through implementation research, skills training and criterion based audit. In Tanzania and in collaboration with Doctors Without Borders he has adapted the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO®) to be as relevant to the context as possible and addressing the seven signal functions of Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care.

Based on this experience Dr. Sørensen was one of the main “architects” in framing, designing and validating the clinical content of The Safe Delivery App, where the challenge was to condense the “key messages” and deliver them in animated movies lasting only around seven minutes. Given this challenge the team adapted the structured Delphi method to systematically score “key messages” for each topic via group of international expert reviewers. After this process the key messages were the basis for the film scripts and also for action cards, notifications and evaluation tools for assessing skills and knowledge. Dr. Sørensen has been the main author on the obstetric chapters and co-authoring the others. The drug list was developed together with Stine Lund and “Pharmacists without Borders”.

Susanne Houd has during her 50+ years as a midwife worked all over the world, both in developed and developing countries. She has worked as a hands-on midwife both in hospitals and at home, as a teacher, as a consultant for the WHO, as researcher and as Dean for the Danish Midwifery School in Copenhagen. She was instrumental in starting the first Canadian Midwifery education.

Susanne has worked in some of the most remote areas of Greenland and Canada. In North Quebec, where women were flown out to give birth, she was part of a project opening up for birth within an area and working closely with Inuit midwives as a teacher and mentor. The results were convincing. Susanne took that knowledge with her when she until recently worked for many years in a very remote area of Greenland as the only educated midwife. Working in a challenging setting taught her how important it is to act fast and as a team in emergency situations. In addition, Susanne developed courses in obstetrical emergencies for the Greenlandic Health Assistants.

Based on clinical background, her work in developing countries and in other parts of the world, and her very big interest in how to work effectively in an emergency situation, Susanne wanted to work for an organization that focuses on mothers and newborns health in remote, low-economic areas. Maternity Foundation was a natural choice and she is working closely with the staff both in Copenhagen and in Ethiopia with focus on teaching and implementation of the Safe Delivery App.