SPARK Finland and its associated institutions have shown once again unity and have joined their forces for the future. Yesterday our associated institutions and city regions have signed a program agreement regarding SPARK Finland for next four years (2020-2023). List of associated institutions and supporting cities you can find here. Same time national coordination responsibility of the program transferred from University of Helsinki (Faculty of Medicine) to Tampere University.

When program was officially started – approximately three years ago – one of the main goals was to build a sustainable program that stands based on its own merits. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment gave us a boost by supporting establishment and building the program. It was our operative managers, mentors and SPARKees job to build a value creating program and show that the program really makes the difference that we claim. As one can find from the list of our alumni the results support the claims.

On behalf of our SPARKees, mentors, managers and our global network we thank all associated institutions and cities for believing in us and letting us generate the impact that is needed for health tech and life science development.

These strange and also scary times shows us once again that human life is fragile and our health is threatened in many ways. But we cannot give up…

Our job is to develop better solutions for human health and not only for those that are living in wealthy countries. Planet called Earth is currently so integrated that we have to support human health all over the world. Why? Because it is humane and right. But it is also smart, because too self-centered scope becomes costly since even remotely emerging health challenges might become our own challenges very quickly. Ability to tap on fast emerging and multi-faceted challenges calls us for collaboration. And that is what the SPARK is by very nature; it’s all about collaboration!

SPARK Finland wishes us all health and optimism in tough times! And let’s keep on working for better solutions – for now remotely.