Unsafe and inconsistent surgical care continues to affect millions of patients worldwide. Around 5 billion people still lack access to safe surgery, while more than 15 million deaths each year are linked to conditions requiring surgical treatment — more than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
Research also shows that one in five patients experiences complications during surgery, and up to half of these cases could potentially be prevented through better training, systems, and standards.
Last month, Alfred Surgery participated at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Oslo, one of the world’s leading conferences focused on healthcare quality and patient safety.
The company shared its experience in improving surgical education through standardized and accessible digital training. The presentation shared experiences from Norway and West Africa and showed how standardized digital training can help make surgery safer in both high-resource and low-resource healthcare systems.
Advancing surgical education is a key step toward improving patient outcomes everywhere.
Alfred Surgery began in 2013, when Norwegian surgical trainee Knut Borch confronted a troubling reality: surgical education was dangerously unstructured. Young surgeons were left to navigate a maze of inconsistent resources, and the consequences were felt directly in patient outcomes. After witnessing several severe complications in a short period of time, this one question stayed with him.
Determined to change this, Knut Borch began building the first sketches of what would become Alfred Surgery.
Early support from Innovation Norway helped turn the idea into a working prototype, while guidance from the Norwegian Minister of Health pointed the project toward the right institutions and funding structures. These early partnerships transformed a personal frustration into a viable national initiative.
A major turning point came in 2018, when Knut Borch met Robbert Jan Lindeman. United by a shared passion for education and patient safety, they joined forces as co-founders.
Together, they secured innovation contracts with University Hospital of North Norway and University Hospital of Stavanger, allowing Alfred Surgery to grow within real clinical environments and alongside practicing surgeons.
In 2021, Borch became Advisor for Education at the European Hernia Society, where he developed Europe’s first structured novice-to-expert training pathway for abdominal wall surgeons. Under this collaboration, the society’s educational activity expanded from one annual course to twelve, with Alfred Surgery serving as the digital backbone of a new, pan-European curriculum.
Today, Alfred Surgery has trained over 1,000 surgeons from all continents. The platform is integrated in six Norwegian hospitals and continues to expand across Scandinavia, the UK, the United States, and mainland Europe. Through humanitarian partnerships, it also supports surgical education in Ghana and Sierra Leone.
18.05.2026.
