New member: Veltek joins CareNet

Veltek has signed up for a CareNet membership. A membership they hope can help them create stronger relations and network with other clusters, share best practices and identify opportunities – especially in the Nordic countries.

Veltek - the backbone of welfare technology in northern Iceland

CareNet has reached out to Perla Björk Egilsdóttir, project manager of the Veltek cluster, for a little chat about Veltek and their new membership.

- Our purpose as a health and welfare technology cluster is to support innovation, research, implementation of new technological solutions, and facilitate knowledge sharing. Our goal is to locally facilitate new product and service offerings within the field. In the work of doing that we furthermore intend to explore the possibilities of cooperation projects in the Nordics and promote education about health and welfare technology, Perla Björk Egilsdóttir says and continues:

- We primarily work toward better health and welfare in northern Iceland. We want to bring our users better solutions, support innovation, and foster a network of knowledge sharing that brings people together – our main goal being to benefit our region in the end.

The founding members of the Iceland Health and Welfare Technology Cluster, Veltek, which has its location in the northern region of Iceland, are regional health institutions, organisations, and local authorities. For example, The Health Care Institution of North Iceland, Akureyri Hospital, Heilsuvernd Care Home, The Intermunicipal Organisation of North Iceland, and The University of Akureyri.

Together they are dedicatedly working to identify opportunities to develop best practices concerning the use of existing and emerging technologies.

- We strive to provide our service users with innovative products for a better daily life by researching, procuring, testing, and implementing new solutions in a systematic way. We do that by bringing together stakeholders in the public sector, private companies, and the scientific community and promoting development in services and investment in new and innovative solutions. We are running a hub of knowledge sharing, and we aim to connect stakeholders to create effective collaborations and partnerships, Perla Björk Egilsdóttir explains.

According to her, Veltek is able to identify true user needs and provide focused assistance to companies interested in offering their products or services, since the cluster represents a particular geographic area, with ties in every relevant sector. If needed, Veltek also provide the academic robustness required to systematically study product efficacy, a quality that can be of great value to companies introducing new products to market.

Excitement about the new CareNet membership

Perla Björk Egilsdóttir says that Veltek's enrollment in the CareNet network is meant to facilitate new Nordic connections and collaborations among other things.

- Bringing new solutions to complex problems requires knowledge exchange. We, therefore, hope our membership in CareNet will help us learn new things about best practices, new trends, and products, she says and elaborates:

- We also want to gain access to companies interested in collaborating with us in Iceland and to learn more from the network about implementing existing and emerging health and welfare technology. We wish to become the natural first stop for Icelandic companies wanting to promote their health and welfare technology offerings abroad. Being an active member in CareNet will therefore make us an even more attractive partner in the Icelandic market.

The manager in CareNet, Anders Lyck Fogh-Schultz, welcomes Veltek to the network and looks forward to collaborating with the Icelandic cluster in the future.

- It is a pleasure and a certain stamp of quality that CareNet is expanding to the Nordic region and especially Iceland. For a long time, we have had good relations with the Icelandic cluster, and with their commitment to the welfare technology agenda, I am sure that together we will strengthen the North Atlantic relations and ensure strong and necessary transfer of knowledge concerning best practice in both countries. I am very much looking forward to the collaboration. And let’s see, we might plan a trip to Iceland during 2023 for the purpose of sharing knowledge.

Read more about Veltek or visit their LinkedIn-profile here.