SPEAKERS
Day 1 - August 26Dr Dipak Kalra
President, The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data
Professor Dipak Kalra is President of The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (www.i-hd.eu), a Professor of Health Informatics and a former London general practitioner. He plays a leading international role in Electronic Health Record R&D, including the reuse of EHRs for research. He has led the development of ISO standards on EHR interoperability, personal health records and data protection. He participates in multiple European Commission funded projects including support for the accelerated uptake of digital health innovations, scaling up the quality, interoperability and the reuse of health data for research including inputs to the European Health Data Space, the collection and use of health outcomes towards more value-based care, the development of an AI-powered federated learning platform in lung cancer and initiatives to improve a patient’s understanding of their medication to improve confidence and adherence.
Dr Lars Lindsköld
President of EFMI; Medical Informatician
Dr Lars Lindsköld is a medical informatician and President of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI), with more than two decades of experience in health system digitalisation in Sweden and Europe. He has led and co‑led major initiatives in radiology, pathology and teledermatology in Västra Götaland Region, including regional imaging registries and the PATOS project for digital pathology. His work focuses on semantic interoperability, health data architectures and AI – making data machine‑readable, portable and meaningful from population‑level evidence down to individual patient journeys. As co‑chair of the Nordic‑Baltic Health Informatics Day, he helps connect perspectives from clinicians, policymakers, innovators and data experts.
Dr Petter Hurlen
Clinical informatics expert; former Head at Akershus UH
Dr Petter Hurlen is a radiologist, clinical informatician and one of the most experienced Nordic voices in healthcare digital transformation. He has served as Head of the Clinical Informatics Unit at Akershus University Hospital, leading the design, implementation and evaluation of electronic health record systems, imaging workflows and decision support. Petter has contributed to European standardisation through CEN TC 251 and is Secretary of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI). In his keynote he discusses the clinician’s role in digital transformation: how involving professionals in requirements, procurement, implementation and governance is vital to achieving real value, safety and user acceptance.
Nele Labi
Deputy Secretary General for Innovation, Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs
Nele Labi is Deputy Secretary General for Innovation at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs, where she leads national efforts in developing e-services, promoting innovation in health and social care, strategic planning, and data-driven policy. She is passionate about proactive government services and integrating healthcare and social services through user-centered and seamless digital solutions. She advocates for innovation that transcends traditional sectoral boundaries. Estonia’s leadership in digital governance provides a powerful platform for these advancements.
Elina Drakvik is Senior Lead at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, where she leads international cooperation on health data and future wellbeing solutions. She coordinates the TEHDAS2 joint action on secondary use of health data, which supports the practical implementation of the European Health Data Space through common guidelines, governance models and technical approaches. With around 15 years of experience in European health and research collaboration in Finland and Sweden, she brings together policy, practice and innovation to make health data more usable for better care, research and business. Her talk will highlight concrete EHDS insights and open questions relevant for the Baltic Sea region.
Dr Julius Juodakis is the Health Data Lead at the State Date Agency of Lithuania. He has a PhD in Statistics and more than 10 years of experience as a researcher, having worked in various areas of biology and medicine across 5 different countries. For the last few years, he has been leading the health data reuse process in Lithuania; his goal is to make Lithuania a global leader in digital medicine, where data is available quickly and equally to researchers, hospitals and private innovators.
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Kristaps Krafte is a Latvian health tech entrepreneur and ecosystem builder. He is a founder of several digital health companies, one of them achieved the first public reimbursement for a digital therapeutic in the Baltics. As Chair of the Digital Health Association Latvia, he contributes to national digital health strategy and co‑organises the Health Data Summit Riga. In his talk “Digital Transformation in Latvian Primary Care: A GP‑Centric Approach to AI Integration”, he will present early experiences of AI‑assisted clinical dashboards in primary care as well as discuss clinical workflows, incentives and ethics.
Dr Jeppe Eriksen
Associate Professor at Aalborg Univ.; President of Danish Society of Digital Health
Dr Jeppe Eriksen is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University and Vice President of the Danish Society of Digital Health. His work examines how citizens perceive, experience and make use of digital health services and technologies such as telemedicine and patient-reported outcomes (PROs). He has contributed to comparative Nordic research on willingness to share health data and on equity in digital healthcare, positioning Denmark as a “critical case” for both the benefits and risks of far‑reaching digitalisation. In his talk, he will present lessons for designing user-centred technologies that promote equity in health.
Professor Johan Magnusson is Professor of Information Systems at the University of Gothenburg and Director of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation (SCDI). His work focuses on governance, digital transformation and AI in large organisations, especially in the public sector and healthcare. He has led several applied research programmes with public leaders on how to redesign governance to unlock digital capability and innovation.
Professor Dagmar Waltemath
Professor of Medical Informatics and Head of the Data Integration Center at University Medicine Greifswald
Prof. Dagmar Waltemath is a Professor of Medical Informatics and Head of the Data Integration Center at University Medicine Greifswald, Germany. Her research focuses on biomedical data integration, including the development of strategies and tools for research data management, data provenance, and the integration of biomedical data with clinical and health data. Through her work, she contributes to advancing data-driven healthcare and enabling more effective use of biomedical and clinical data for research and innovation.
Sari Palojoki
Senior Advisor, Team Leader for International Digitalisation Policy, PhD | Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health
Sari Palojoki holds a Ph.D. in health informatics and an M.Sc. in health care. For the past eight years, she has served as Senior Advisor at the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, including two years as Principal Expert in eHealth at the EU's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) while on leave from the ministry. She currently drives international digitalization policy within the EU, WHO, and the Nordic Council of Ministers, serving as Finland's second national representative to the EC EHDS (European Health Data Space) committee and chairing the WHO Europe Health Information Network (HIN). Earlier, she worked in the pharmaceutical industry and at the Finnish Medicines Agency, later serving as deputy head and then head of the eHealth Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare. Before joining the Ministry, she spent seven years as Head of Patient Safety and Security at Helsinki University Hospital District (HUS).
Sari Palojoki holds a Ph.D. in health informatics and an M.Sc. in health care. For the past eight years, she has served as Senior Advisor at the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, including two years as Principal Expert in eHealth at the EU's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) while on leave from the ministry. She currently drives international digitalization policy within the EU, WHO, and the Nordic Council of Ministers, serving as Finland's second national representative to the EC EHDS (European Health Data Space) committee and chairing the WHO Europe Health Information Network (HIN). Earlier, she worked in the pharmaceutical industry and at the Finnish Medicines Agency, later serving as deputy head and then head of the eHealth Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare. Before joining the Ministry, she spent seven years as Head of Patient Safety and Security at Helsinki University Hospital District (HUS).
Aiga Balode
Deputy State Secretary | Latvian Ministry of Health
Aiga Balode currently is the Deputy state secretary on digitalisation and change management of the Ministry of Health. Her professional experience is related to the public sector – 14 years dedicated to the work of the data protection authority in Latvia, followed by the experience in the State Employment Agency and now in the Ministry of Health. Public good and international cooperation to achieve it has been the main driving forces, both for life-long learning and seeking of new collaboration formats. Aiga Balode is leading the Digital Health Board in Latvia and is an active member of public sector innovation ecosystem, to urge new public private cooperation initiatives and horizontal cooperation for better healthcare provision in Latvia.
Day 2 - August 27
Andres Metspalu
Professor of Genomics and Biobanking / Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Tartu - Estonia
Professor of Genomics and Biobanking / Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Tartu - Estonia
Andres Metspalu, MD, PhD, is Professor of Genomics and Biobanking and Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Tartu, Estonia. His research focuses on human genomics, the genetics of complex diseases, population-based biobanks, and the implementation of precision medicine in healthcare. Professor Metspalu has authored or co-authored more than 700 scientific publications and has played a leading role in developing genomic medicine and biobanking in Estonia and internationally. He has served as President of the European Society of Human Genetics and contributed to numerous European scientific initiatives, including the EU 1+ Million Genomes Initiative. He was elected to the Estonian Academy of Sciences in 2010 and Academia Europaea in 2024 and has received numerous national and international honours for his contributions to science.
Professor of Complex Genetics at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam – The Netherlands
André G. Uitterlinden is an emeritus Professor of Complex Genetics and was with > 50 group members head of the Laboratory of Population Genomics and the genomics facility at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Prof. Uitterlinden has a long standing interest in DNA analysis, both technically as well as applying this to human health related research. He has been mostly involved in identifying genetic factors for common traits and diseases, for which he early on initiated Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) in the Netherlands and set up global consortia. In 2005 he initiated a service providing facility which is now, as the genomics Core Facility, one of Europe’s largest genomics facilities, providing services for DNA isolation, genotyping, sequencing, and data analysis, and is handling millions of samples for a global client portfolio. He is now focused on improving the position of Europe in human genomics projects and implementing genetic information in health care and prevention settings. He is PI of the strategic GOALL project within Erasmus MC (“Genotyping On ALL patients”). In 2020 he became member of the coordination team of the European 1+ million genomes initiative, and therein leads the “Genome of Europe” project to establish the first 100,000 reference genomes covering the population diversity across Europe. He has co-authored over 1500 papers (H-index 216).
Michaela Th. Mayrhofer
Researcher / Affiliate / Senior Exper, Medical University of Innsbruck - Austria
Michaela was trained as a political scientist, historian and a sociologist in Vienna, Louvain-la-Neuve, Essex, and Paris. Over the course of her academic career, she has held various positions and conducted research at institutions such as the Centre de Recherche Médecine, Sciences, Santé et Société, the University of Vienna, the Institute of Technology and Society Studies at Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt/Vienna/Graz, the Technical University of Vienna, the Fondation Brocher, and the Medical University of Graz. She also held a Research Fellowship at the Institut für Technik-und Wissenschaftsforschung at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt and at the University of Newcastle. Between 2013 and 2017, she served as a member of the editorial board for the Austrian Journal of Political Science, and she is currently a review editor for Frontiers in Genetics. For more than a decade, she contributed to the implementation of BBMRI-ERIC, where she has served as Interim Director General, scientific (2020) or Head of the ELSI Services & Research (2019-2024). The ELSI department, which included nine specialists and a network of nearly 40 experts across more than 20 Member States, was involved in over 20 active research projects, several of which she led as WP lead. Additionally, she serves as a member of several scientific and ethical advisory boards, ethics advisor and reviewer. She is currently involved with the Human Genome Austria project at the Medical University of Innsbruck. In 2025, she founded Papillon Pathways, a consultancy that supports organisations with governance challenges in the life sciences sector. Her work centres on connecting research, policy, and real-world application, blending scientific knowledge with strategic advisory services while continuing to develop her own research.
Lise-Lotte Lääne
Partner, Head of Life Sciences & Healthcare at Sorainen – Estonia
Lise-Lotte Lääne is a partner at Sorainen, leading Sorainen’s Life Sciences & Healthcare sector group, advising clients in health tech, medtech, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare services. With over 15 years of experience as a lawyer, Lise-Lotte specialises in regulatory, intellectual property, and data protection matters. Her professional activities in these fields range from leading pan-European market access projects to advising clients on specific questions relating to EU or local legislation. Lise-Lotte also represents clients in administrative and court disputes, including patent disputes.
Sorainen is a fully integrated regional law firm operating in the Baltics, with offices in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Sorainen provides comprehensive legal assistance across all areas of law. With a team of 300 lawyers and tax specialists, Sorainen has the capacity to support clients in even the most demanding cases. Since its founding in 1995, Sorainen has handled numerous significant mandates for international and local clients.
Sorainen is a fully integrated regional law firm operating in the Baltics, with offices in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Sorainen provides comprehensive legal assistance across all areas of law. With a team of 300 lawyers and tax specialists, Sorainen has the capacity to support clients in even the most demanding cases. Since its founding in 1995, Sorainen has handled numerous significant mandates for international and local clients.
Elen Vettus
Head of Oncology / East Tallinn Central Hospital
Dr Elen Vettus is a medical oncologist specialising in breast cancer and melanoma, with a strong interest in personalised medicine and integrative oncology. She has previously served as Head of an Oncology Centre and is currently pursuing her second Master’s degree in Digital Health at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech). She is involved in several projects within the Estonian Cancer Network (ESTCAN), including the national development of a cancer data dashboard and initiatives focused on improving patient care pathways. Her interests lie at the intersection of clinical oncology, digital health and personalised medicine, with a focus on translating data and innovation into better patient care — delivering the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.
Andres Võrk
Health and labour economist, lecturer in econometrics at the University of Tartu – Estonia
Andres Võrk is an Estonian economist specialising in health economics and social policy analysis. He currently works as a lecturer and analyst at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tartu, where he teaches econometrics, policy impact assessment methods, and health economics. His main areas of expertise include healthcare financing, analysis of inequality in healthcare utilisation and access to healthcare. He has co-authored several Estonian studies addressing financial protection and out-of-pocket payments, the sustainability of healthcare financing, and inequality in utilisation of healthcare services.
Taavi Lai
Founder of INTEGRIA Reseach and Analytics Lab – Estonia
Taavi Lai, MD, PhD (1974) is a public health and health system researcher, knowledge translator and policy maker who links his long-time experiences to support development and implementation of evidence-based policies and health system reforms for health improvement of individuals and populations globally. His previous research topics in Department of Public Health, the University of Tartu, Estonia spanned from HRQoL and national burden of disease studies to health impact analysis, healthcare resource management and financing. During his years in the Ministry of Social Affairs in Estonia he was responsible for national population health surveys, initiated routine collection of national HRQoL data, created the national health system performance assessment framework and was the coordinating author of the first Estonian national overarching health strategy. Currently, his main focus is on supporting Estonian value-based healthcare, integrated care and outcome-based payment reforms while continuing to support various countries in generating evidence for health system strengthening, developing evidence-supported health policies and change management of health systems.
Elena Sügis
Lead Data Scientist at Nortal / Assistant Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Tartu – Estonia
Elena Sügis is a Lead Data Scientist at Nortal Group and a Lecturer in Health Informatics at the Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu. Her work focuses on the practical implementation of artificial intelligence in healthcare and enterprise systems, with expertise spanning generative AI, voice AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), trustworthy AI evaluation, and real-world health data analysis. She advises senior leadership on Data & AI strategy and has led AI initiatives for public and private sector organisations. Elena has also contributed to national and international digital health projects and is passionate about translating cutting-edge AI research and engineering practices into real-world clinical and organisational impact.
Tiina Österman
Head of Unit in Personalised Medicine & Senior Specialist on Personalised Medicine at Tartu University Hospital – Estonia
Tiina Österman leads the research and development unit for personalised medicine at Tartu University Hospital, Estonia's leading clinical genetics centre. Her team focuses on projects that aim to translate genomics into routine clinical care — implementing polygenic risk scores in breast cancer screening, return of results and referral to a clinic for familial hypercholesterolaemia, and developing rapid genome sequencing and precision oncology services. She works closely with the University of Tartu and the Estonian Biobank, drawing on Estonia's population-scale genomic infrastructure to move personalised medicine from research into everyday practice.
Margus Punab
Professor in Andrology at Tartu University/ Head of the 6th Clinical Area at Tartu University Hospital
Prof. Margus Punab is a professor of andrology at the Institute of Clinical Medicine at the University of Tartu, a senior physician at Tartu University Hospital (TUH), and head of the 6th clinical division at TUH that includes Radiology Clinic, Pathology Service, Blood Center, Genetics and Personalized Medicine Clinic, Laboratory Service Centre (United Laboratories) and Pharmacy of TUH. Prof. Punab is the first certified andrologist in Estonia, founder of andrology as a medical specialty in Estonia and Andrology Clinic, Tartu University Hospital (AC-TUH), and has contributed significantly to raising men's health awareness in the Baltic and Northern-European countries. Prof. Punab's main areas of research are male reproductive function, genetic aspects of male infertility, hypogonadism and prostate diseases, studies on male aging, and the relationship between reproductive health and general health risks. He has supervised to completion four doctoral theses and is currently supervising additional four doctoral students. During his career as a clinical researcher, he has published nearly 200 articles. His papers have been cited nearly 56,000 times and his h-index is 72.
To be continued