The VÍS Prevention Conference was held in Harpa on 29 February. This was the fourteenth VÍS prevention conference and it has now attracted around 270 people. The theme of this year was: Are the wheels turning towards success?

Helgi Haraldsson, SAk’s safety manager, spoke at the conference about the certification process. He spoke in detail about SAk’s decision to start this journey, the certification process, and wondered whether it had been successful for the hospital. Work on getting an international quality certification for SAk began in 2012 and the pre-audit was conducted two years later. Afterwards, in December 2015, SAk received certification DNV from the DIAS standard for hospitals.

Since then, more certifications have followed, such as ISO 9001 quality management standard, ISO 27001 standard on information security issues and ÍST 85 on equal pay certification.

Helgi's lecture can be seen here: Vottun – er það leiðin að árangri? - Helgi Haraldsson (youtube.com)

The rural heart

“It’s useful to attend such conferences, see what others are doing and what’s new and top of the agenda. There is always something good that comes out of it,” says Helgi.

“At the conference, two North-Iceland based companies were nominated for the Prevention Prize and last year another North-Iceland based company was awarded the prize. “It is always a pleasure to see that the companies in the region seem to be doing well in preventing incidents,” Helgi concludes.