Mentors
Kevin John Dean, UK
Kevin, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and of The Chartered Institute for IT, is the Managing Director of Smart Health Science Limited www.smarthealthscience.com and has been named by the Health Services Journal as one of the 50 Top Innovators in Healthcare. Since 2012, Kevin has been Adjunct Professor of Telehealth at the Maersk Institute, Denmark, and is also Senior Research Fellow at RAND Europe. Kevin was a member of the Advisory Board of Patient@Home, Denmark's largest welfare-technological research and innovation initiative, focusing on new technologies and services aimed at rehabilitation and monitoring activities within the Danish public health sector.
Claus Duedal Pedersen, DK
Claus has more than 20-years’ experience in development and implementation of innovative technologies in healthcare. His experience goes from the implementation of the first EMR system in Denmark in 1996 towards national implementation of standards for communication and the national Danish IT-infrastructure for healthcare to the transformation process of the University Hospital towards the new facilities with significantly less bed capacity.
In 2012, Claus was in charge of establishing the Center for Innovative Medical Technologies, a joined innovation and research center between OUH and the University of Southern Denmark. CIMT has especially been working with collaborative projects between healthcare organization and industry to bring new products and services to the market.
As director of the Sentinel Unit, Claus is in charge of the development and implementation of a national quality and research infrastructure for the primary care sector in Denmark.
Maritta Perälä-Heape, FIN
Maritta is a professor of practice in data-driven health care and innovation ecosystems and a director of Centre for Health and Technology (https://www.oulu.fi/cht/) in University of Oulu, Finland.
She is facilitating the strategic R&D&I collaboration between academia, business and public healthcare sector in Ouluhealth ecosystem (https://ouluhealth.fi/ ), which is a multi-partner ecosystem to accelerate digital transformation.
Maritta is also facilitating strategic cooperation through national and international networks and partnerships. Her interest areas are personalized health and care, digital health and data-driven care innovations, and she is driving the change for the successful evolution towards a predictive, personalized, preventive and participatory healthcare system.
She has experience in business idea coaching and in evaluating project proposals for national and EU programs.
Linnar Viik, EST
Linnar is one of the founders of Estonian e-Governance Academy and Program Director of Smart Governance.
He has advised Estonian and many other governments on ICT and innovation policy and is recognized as an IT visionary. He has been instrumental in the rapid development of Estonian computer and network infrastructure, as well as the Estonian internet voting and electronic signature projects.
Linnar lectures innovation management at Tartu University. In 2019 he was elected Chairman of EIT Digital Council.
He’s a former executive at several mobile communications, broadband and software companies such as Skype and Fortumo, advisor at the Nordic Investment Bank, and Board Member of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology.
Linnar is co-founder and member of the board of the mobile services and software development company Mobi Solutions and the start-up Pocopay.
Terje Peetso, EST
Terje is a member of the management board in the North Estonia Medical Centre in Tallinn since April 2018. Among other tasks she is responsible for the coordination of research and innovation activities in the hospital and cooperation with other hospitals and clinical partners in Estonia and abroad.
Terje worked in the European Commission (2003-2018) on digital health, tobacco control and risk assessment. She was the Head of Sector on eHealth and Ageing Policy in the European Commission`s DG CONNECT. She also participated in the preparation of workplans of Horizon 2020, evaluation of digital health project proposals and monitored the implementation of funded projects. In 2014 she was the EU Fellow in the University of Southern California, USA, where her research focus was on the obstacles which hinder the introduction eHealth in healthcare systems.
Terje holds a diploma in medicine from the University of Tartu, Estonia.
Erki Mölder, EST
Erki graduated from Tartu University in the field of investments and banking in 1997. As a CEO of Quattromed (from 1999 to 2013) he helped the company to grow from UT spin-off company to biggest regional laboratory operating in three countries and employing over 200 employees. Quattromed was acquired in 2013 by Synlab.Since 2013, Erki has been investing in business models of today and tomorrow in healthcare. Among others, Erki has the following companies in his portfolio: Unimed (dentistry), Qvalitas (occupational health), Cognuse (CoNurse and kõneravi.ee), Capster (sinus treatment device), LungPass (digital stethoscope), Transformative AI (early detection platform of CVC events) and Activate Health (novel health management platform).
Since 2013 Erki is a member of Estonian Association of Business Angels (EstBAN) and a venture partner for a Singapore based healthtech investment fund Verge HealthTech Fund I.
Erki is the founder of Health Economy Association (established in 2019) and first healthtech-related business accelerator HealthFounders (established in 2020).
Since 2020 Erki serves as the Supervisory Council member of the biggest hospital in Latvia - Riga East University Hospital.