Tuula Helander

 
Deputy Director General

Ministry of Social Affairs and Health

Dr. Tuula Helander has many years of experience in various fields and positions in the vast area of health care - from the academic research, hospital diagnostics and patient care, and management to steering and legislation. At the moment, Helander is the Director of the Biotechnology and Medicines Unit at the Dept. of Safety, Security and Health, at the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. The unit handles issues pertaining to: pharmaceutical services, the availability of medicines, and preparedness and readiness related to medicines; data protection; the primary and secondary use of patient data; acquisition of vaccines; biotechnology and gene technology, medical research; medical devices; biobank operations and national cluster of excellences; legislation on the medical use of human blood, tissues and organs and legislation on other substances of human origin etc. Helander is the EU Member State representative and co-chair with the EU Commission (DG CNECT) for the Declaration “Towards access to at least 1 million sequenced genomes in the EU”, and MS representative at the Sub-group on Cancer (Mission on Cancer; Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan) etc. Previously she was Senior Adviser in Permanent Secretary’s Cabinet at the Ministry, responsibilities mostly related to Health Sector Growth Strategy and Personalized Medicine. She made her PhD thesis at the Dept. of Pathology at the University of Helsinki, and the main results were published in Nature (Helander et al. 1996), and was awarded by National Medix Prize. She has been Director of Southern Cancer Center at the Helsinki University Hospital, Development Manager at the Helsinki University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Geneticist at the Helsinki University Women's Hospital (at the Prenatal Diagnostic unit, and the Reproductive Medicine Unit). In addition, she was the Secretary General of Finnish Cancer Institute for over 20 years.

Updated: June 2026