Health Data Policy into Practice

Director, Division of Health Systems, World Health Organization/Europe

Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat is Director of the Division of Health Systems at WHO/Europe. She joined WHO/Europe in 2020 as Director of the Division of Country Health Policies and Systems. A medical doctor and specialist in public health medicine, she previously held senior roles in Malta’s Ministry of Health, including Chief Medical Officer. She is a former President of EUPHA and has contributed extensively to European health policy and research. She holds a PhD from Maastricht University and is an associate professor at the University of Malta. Her work has been recognized with the Andrija Stampar Medal and a UK Honorary Fellowship.

Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of the Interior and Health of Denmark

Dorte Bech Vizard currently serves as Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior and Health of Denmark, responsible for Patient Safety, Life Science  and International Cooperation – a position she has held since May 2021. Prior to this appointment, Dorte was Director of the Government’s Taskforce for Export Promotion and Job Creation in light of COVID-19.

With a Master of Law from 1998, Dorte has had several roles within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs including as the Ambassador of Denmark to Singapore and Brunei, Director of Invest in Denmark, and Political Counsellor at the Royal Danish Embassy in New Delhi.

She has also worked with the Ministry of Social Affairs of Denmark as Head of Department for Legal and International Affairs, and in the private sector with Deloitte Business Consulting. In 2013, Dorte was awarded the Order of Dannebrog, a Danish knighthood. She is married and has two children.

Senior Scientist, Institute for Health Sciences in Aragon (IACS), Spain

Enrique Bernal-Delgado, MD, PhD, MPH, MScHE, founded the Data Science for Health Services and Policy research group at the Institute for Health Sciences in Aragon (IACS) in 2003; and, currently holds the position of senior scientist there. His research focuses on the reuse of massive real-world routine data.

In the TEHDAS Joint Action, he was involved in conceptualising the European Health Data Space for secondary use. From January 2024, he leads QUANTUM, a European project aiming to develop a data quality and utility labelling mechanism for HealtData@EU datasets.

Head of Sector – Research Coordination, European Commission, DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (CNECT), A6: AI in health and life sciences

Szymon Bielecki is Head of Sector in the digital health unit at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT). He works on the design and implementation of actions relevant for driving EU’s excellency in the area of AI in the health sector. Among others, he supervises the establishment of health data infrastructures for research, innovation, personalised medicine and public health under Digital Europe and other funding schemes, the European 1+ Million Genomes initiative and other actions fostering health data re-use.

PhD, Data Scientist, BfArM (The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices) (DE)

Pia Brinkmann studied Psychology at Maastricht University (NL), followed by a Research Master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience. She continued her research journey at Maastricht University, after stops in Spain and Canada to learn more about the brain. She obtained a doctorate stipend from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and started her PhD on auditory neuroscience in 2020, which she successfully defended in 2024. Afterwards, she started working at the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) and currently at the Data Access and Coordination Office, where she is actively involved in TEHDAS2 WP7, tasks 7.2 and 7.5.

Executive Director, Innovative Health Initiative

Dr Niklas Blomberg joined IHI as Executive Director in January 2024. He brings to the role extensive experience in both research and leadership roles in the life sciences.

A Swedish national, he has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Gothenburg, and a PhD in structural biology and bioinformatics from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany.

He worked as a research scientist for AstraZeneca in Sweden for 14 years, taking on increasingly senior roles in the company, and leading the establishment of a team for data driven drug discovery in the respiratory and inflammation fields. During this time, he was industry co-lead of Open PHACTS, a project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the forerunner to IHI.

In 2013, he joined the fledgling research infrastructure ELIXIR. As its founding director, he oversaw the final negotiations between the member states to formally establish and launch ELIXIR. Under his leadership, the organisation built up its operational and project management capacity, grew to include 23 member states, and secured funding from both the member states and an extensive portfolio of EU-funded projects, including projects from IMI2, the European Open Science Cloud and the European Genomic Data Infrastructure.

Director of Strategic Foresight and International Relations, Biocat – BioRegion of Catalonia; President, Council of European BioRegions

PhD Molecular Biology, MSc Medical Communication, MA Diplomacy & International Affairs. Director of Strategic Foresight and International Relations at Biocat, President of the Council of European BioRegions (CEBR), Member of the Board of Directors, European Clusters Alliance (ECA), Member of the Joint Industrial Cooperation Forum, Health Emergency and Preparedness Agency (HERA), EIT Health Innostars mentor, Member of the Expert Committee for AI/Health Program (Government of Catalonia). Member of the Expert Committee for the National Agreement for health System Transformation (Government of Catalonia), 2024. National Expert Horizon Europe, Cluster Health Program Committee (2020-2022). Montse’s interests: Innovation Ecosystems, Digitalisation, Policy, Internationalisation, Gender.

Program Officer and International Coordinator, The Swedish e-Health Agency

Ann Gustafsson is an experienced Occupational therapist with a long background in neurorehabilitation, at the Rehabilitation Medicine Clinic at Danderyd Hospital. During the time there, Ann contributed to the development of the innovative pre-discharge unit, @home a safe and supportive living environment with assistive technologies and reminder systems for individuals with brain injuries.

After that, Ann worked at the IT company Alleato as a Product Owner and Business Area Manager, which focused on developing remote monitoring solutions using IoT technologies, enabling individuals to receive care and support in their own homes.

In the past five years, Ann has been employed at the Swedish eHealth Agency (eHälsomyndigheten) as a Program officer and International Coordinator. Currently, Ann serves as Task Lead in the TEHDAS 2 project preparing for implementation of European Health Data Space, responsible for Tasks 5.2.1 and 5.2.2. which focusing on health data discovery.

Senior Specialist, Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority Findata

Rosa Juuti holds a Master of Science degree from University of Tampere, majoring in molecular biology with a focus on genetics, immunology and pharmacology. She has worked at EPID Research and StatFinn (nowadays part of IQVIA) as a research associate and project manager on various pharmacoepidemiological and post-authorization safety studies, sponsored by major international pharma companies. Since 2020 she has worked at Findata, the Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority as a senior specialist, participating in building Findata’s services as well as processing applications and granting data permits. Currently, she leads the task 6.3 of the TEHDAS2 joint action.

Head of Section, Danish Health Data Authority

Alexander Leander Knudsen is Head of Section at the Danish Health Data Authority, where he works on the implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) in Denmark. His responsibilities include conducting gap analyses and economic analyses to ensure the effective national integration of EHDS.

Customer Relations for Europe, SNOMED International

Licínio Kustra Mano is the Customer Relations Lead for Europe at SNOMED International, where he focuses on advancing the adoption of SNOMED CT across European healthcare systems. With a background in digital health policy and cross-border infrastructure architecture, he previously contributed to the European Commission’s initiatives on the European Health Data Space.

Licínio is passionate about ensuring that health data remains comprehensible, accessible, and useful for generations to come.

Senior Application Specialist, CSC – IT Center for Science

Heikki Lehväslaiho works as a service architect for sensitive data services at CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland. He is adjunct professor of molecular genetics at Helsinki University. He has worked on biomedical bioinformatics research and infrastructure projects on three continents.

Head of Department, Danish Health Data Authority

Peter Munch Jensen is head of the department called “Strategy and Development” at the Danish Health Data Authority. He has been working at the Danish Health Data Authority since 2016 and been Head of Department since 2020. Peter Munch Jensen has previously been employed in the Ministry of the Interior and Health for 8 years. Strategy and Development works with international cooperation, including tasks related to the Danish implementation of European Health Data Space.

Advisor, Nictiz

Rob Schubert is an Advisor at Nictiz, specializing in secondary data use and AI. He is actively involved in European projects such as TEHDAS2 and Xt-EHR, contributing to the development of cross-border health data infrastructures. With a background in AI and digital health start-ups working with clinical data, Rob brings hands-on innovation experience to the policy and implementation level.

Consultant, Ministry of Health of the CzechRepublic

Radovan Tomášik is a Software Engineer at BBMRI-ERIC, where he plays a key role in developing an open source Access Management System. He is also pursuing a PhD focused on data quality in federated environments. With over five years of experience working with HL7 FHIR, Radovan contributes to advancing healthcare interoperability standards as a member of HL7 CZ.

Legal Officer, Italian Ministry of Health

Lucrezia Valieri is a legal officer for the Department of Health information systems and digital innovation in healthcare at the Italian Ministry of Health.

She provides legal support for the promotion of the Italian and European digital system in the health sector; she actively participated to the Council working group for the writing of the Regulation on the European Health Data Space; now with her collegue Maya Bucciarelli she has been responsible for the writing of the guidelines on penalties for non-compliance related to the EHDS regulation.

Principal Researcher, Science for Life Laboratory

Päivi Östling, Associate Professor, has extensive research experience in precision cancer medicine (PCM) and established a functional precision medicine (fPM) platform at SciLifeLab, Karolinska Institutet. The research team generates individualized drug profiles for solid and hematological cancers. She has been the Scientific Lead of Precision Medicine at SciLifeLab, she aims to enable next-generation precision medicine infrastructure. She is part of the Swedish node for the European DIGITAL-project TEF-Health, supporting Health AI providers. Päivi holds key positions in Swedish Life Science, including SWELife, Cancer Research KI, and Genomic Medicine Sweden. Her research and leadership roles provide valuable insights into precision medicine, health data, and AI.