The long-awaited 2021 Nordic Society of Human Genetics and Precision Medicine Biennial Meeting took place online November 8 and 9. As we were unable to gather in Helsinki, the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM co-hosted the virtual meeting. We know that you would rather have met your colleagues in person, but we had a great digital event where our audience had many opportunities to interact with top researchers in the field of human genetics and precision medicine.
Over the span of two days, leading academic and industry scientists, clinical researchers, academic leaders, funding organizations, and other stakeholders gathered to discuss national overviews of precision medicine initiatives, research and clinical sequencing, health and other register data. Highlights included keynote presentations from Cecilia Lindgren (University of Oxford) and Kári Stefánsson (deCODE genetics), as well as the national research summaries, with senior representatives from each country leading sessions with young researchers from their countries:
In addition, there was a special session on return of incidental findings in genetic sequencing, both whom should be contacted and the relatively overlooked area of what should be returned, especially with variants of lower penetrance, featuring panelists Heidi B. Bentzen of the University of Oslo, Patrick Sulem of deCODE genetics, Andres Metspalu of the Estonian Genome Centre, and Elisabeth Widén of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM. The final panel, moderated by Thomas F. Hansen, addressed challenges and opportunities for Nordic collaboration, with a focus on multi-omics.
Virtual posters were showcased as pre-recorded, four-minute presentations posted next to chat rooms where presenters engaged with the audience in writing as well as via 1:1 video.
We thank our program committee for developing an exciting meeting and our sponsors for their support of Nordic science!
