Vikram Singh Parmar, Ulrik Wisløff, Øyvind Sandbakk and Erney Mattsson at the Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi
By Vikram Singh Parmar, innovation leader, NTNU
Under the NTNU’s Strategic Program of Knowledge Based Innovation for the period 2018 – 2025, Dr. Vikram Singh Parmar, Innovation Leader from the Center for Elite Sports Research, INB and Center for Cardiac Research, ISB organized a trip to India on August 27th-30th, 2019. The Innovation Norway’s office of the Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi hosted the delegation from NTNU. The delegation included Prof. Ulrik Wisløff from ISB, Prof. Øyvind Sandbakk from INB, and Prof. Erney Mattsson from ISB.
NTNU and Innovation Norway teamed up to organize a seminar on “Indo-Norwegian Seminar on Innovations in Elite Sports Medicine and Cardiovascular Surgery” with Indian sports organizations, universities, and hospitals.
The objective of the seminar was to learn from innovations in sports medicine and technology in Norway and how to leverage these in Indian sports, at national and international/Olympics levels. In addition to being very successful in elite sports, Norway has successfully used sports science and technology, both at a school, university and community level to promote health and wellness among Norwegians. How can this sports model be replicated and customized for Indian setting?
From the Indian side, we saw participation from the only Olympic gold medalist from India Mr. Abhinav Bindra who spoke about his experiences and need for better sports infrastructure to train Indian athletes and in general for Indian citizens. The Indian participants included representative from government and private sports organizations, universities interested in setting up sports driven educational programs.
From the Norwegian side, Prof. Wisløff presented work from CERG about the value of physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and personal activity intelligence. He also shared evidence of beneficial effects of high intensity physical activity in health and disease. Prof. Sandbakk presented work from SenTIF on how his group successfully combine world-class athlete support with high-quality research. He spoke about Olympic and Paralympic athletes and how exercise physiology, recovery optimization, and equipment optimization are dealt in their research group. He particularly shared example on importance of communication between athletes, coach, and scientist. Prof. Mattsson presented the attitudes and organizations needed to support innovations and new thinking. He showed practical examples of how diversity, thinking outside the box and cultural interest beside logic analysis can end up with new innovations in healthcare. As examples he showed how mathematics, the oil industry, knitting, and positive attitude towards “failures” had led to new medical products.
Overall, the seminar received a tremendous response from the Indian participants. In the coming months, we foresee collaboration with the Indian government, Indian hospitals with new health care innovations, Indian Sports Authorities, educational institutions, and private sports academies. We as a team hope, this initiative will increase visibility of NTNU as an Innovative University, thereby, align with the NTNU’s vision of knowledge for the better world.