​Spring Brings Health Hotspot To Helsinki With Nordic Health Investment Day

    Nordic Health Investment Day, organized on June 1st in Helsinki, is a comprehensive matchmaking event bringing together life sciences and health tech investors, accelerators, large corporations and international media with innovative startups.

    The event will unite close to 500 participants, including over 100 startups and investors with 20 speakers.


    This guest post is written by Ville Koiste from the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. Photo: Shutterstock

    It has been great to follow the recent development of the Nordic-Baltic health sector as health is starting to dominate the local startup hubs. Despite this we haven’t had a place or time for startups and investors to gather together on a larger scale. Many stakeholders have been calling for a larger investment event focused on health and life sciences in the Nordics – especially with a digital twist.

    But now it is great to see HealthSPA and Arctic15, as well as Tekes, Finpro, Sitra and others to collaborate and enable Nordic Health Investment Day – the big brother or sister of last year’s Arctic15 Digital Health Track.

    We want to offer a physical, fixed-term platform for health and life sciences sector to meet and build new partnerships. There will not be a better chance to come together and get your calendar booked with meetings filled with business value.

    48 hours filled with healthy opportunities

    With its growth and internationalization focused program, Nordic Health Investment Day offers excellent context for creating the future superstars of health. As we all know, Nordic-Baltic countries offer the leading know-how in digital business and for example Finland has been ranked first for its impact on global innovation.

    Many leading countries in medical research can be found from the Northern Europe, as well as some of the world’s hottest startup hubs like Tallinn, Stockholm and Helsinki, to mention a few. Premises are excellent, but a lot of the potential hasn’t still been actualized.

    On June 1st we will have an opportunity to facilitate a gathering for over 500 participants, including health startups, accelerators such as for example Startup Health and Vertical, and investors – for instance business angels, XL Health and LifeLine Ventures – in Helsinki.

    All the magic happens face-to-face, thanks to our matchmaking tool and spacious deal-room area. The program is also filled with interesting speeches and it is interesting to hear what for example Nokia Growth Partners, the venture arm of Nokia, is working with in the health scene. Maybe it has something to do with its $350M fund that was announced recently?

    Also many larger companies, like for example Johnson & Johnson, are attending the event and browsing for potential partnerships with startups and growth companies.

    To warm people up, Upgraded Life Festival brings the broader health ecosystem to Biomedicum in Helsinki on May 31st, including startups, corporates clinicians, researchers, biobanks, public decision makers and students to showcase newest innovations from the field and network.

    This event combination makes it hard – or even impossible – to find a bigger health startup and innovation gathering elsewhere from the Nordics.

    Together We Are Smarter, Stronger – And Healthier

    Without the participation of the key players – entrepreneurs, investors, large corporations and other stakeholders – the event will not generate the value it is ought to do. And obviously the event itself is not why we’re doing this, rather it’s about the possibility to enable better health and innovative care solutions for all of us.

    The momentum to create growth from health is now and we all have a role in this unfinished chapter.

    So let’s spread the word, invite our key contacts to the event and make the health phenomenon even bigger than before.