News

With Upgraded Life Festival, more familiarly known as ULF, we have always aimed for creating a platform that is focused on societal change, sharing knowledge, and creating valuable connections between stakeholders of the health and wellbeing industry in the Nordics and Baltics. Our key target is to bring together a large group of influencers from the public and private, from small companies to corporates, to redefine the big questions of healthcare and open up a dialogue that will encourage development and innovation.

This year’s ULF gathered 800 visitors, 70+ startups, 30+ investors and 100+ healthcare professionals all with the common vision of developing better healthcare in the future. The attendees represented a wide range of different parties in the health innovation ecosystem – entrepreneurs, investors, healthcare professionals, experts from the public sector, researchers and other industry specialists. The event was more international than ever before with 20% of international attendees.

ULF has always been standing on two strong pillars. The first one is the networking, which usually includes the exchange of  business cards you did not expect to get. Close to 400 meetings were booked through the Brella matchmaking app, and the feedback you gave on the new valuable contacts, was truly amazing.

The other pillar of ULF is the learning and sharing of knowledge through the festival program. This year the goal was to provide a holistic view on health, looking both on individual innovations that might support a person during their life journey, but also to give better insights on the collaborative aspect of the health ecosystem and the different actors in it. To highlight a few speeches, this year on stage we had Eric Friedman from Fitbit talking about their aim to bridge the gap between wellness and healthcare, award winning surgeon Shafi Ahmed, showcasing the use of Virtual Reality in surgical training, representatives form Lähitapiola discussing the role of insurance companies and startups in preventive healthcare and innovation professor Alf Rehn talking about the lack of ambition in health innovation.

The feedback we received from you at Upgraded Life Festival 2018,  was extremely positive. A big thank you to the whole ecosystem! Post-ULF 2018 we are even more excited about taking the next step ahead, and being the organizers of an event that does not only thrive for sustainability and effective healthcare and wellbeing solutions, but also strengthens Finland’s position both economically and socially.

Check out all photos from ULF 2018, and experience the vibe. See you next year!