Kela and Keva
Last time I’ve used KELA services was when I was studying nursing at the University of Applied Sciences and got a student financial aid and housing benefit in the beginning. After moving in with my boyfriend I wasn’t allowed to have housing benefit anymore because he was working full time. Now I pay students health care fees trough KELA twice a year, but that’s all. I have had European health care card for years know and I haven’t had need to use it abroad.
I think it is important to have KELA and other social services here in Finland. As a student, mother on a maternity leave, employer on a long sick leave or as a retiree you can have financial support from KELA when your incomes are lower.
Oma Kanta is very familiar to me. The access is very easy with your certificate card (if you have one), electronic banking personal identify codes or mobile certificate. For example, you’ll find your medical records, prescriptions, vaccinations there and you can also write your own advance decision there! Which is highly recommended.
I’ve been curious to visit Keva, but I’ve been chicken out because I don’t want to see the age when I’ll retire, which is probably never. But turned out that at this point this fear was unnecessary and my lowest age to retire is 68 and seems that it is better to work till the age of 70 to get a better pension. I couldn’t see how much my pension would be at the age of 63. Even though my retirement age wasn’t as much as I was afraid of, it made me realize that I don’t want to work till the age of 68 or 70. And to avoid that I must save and invest more money and try to get autarky way before that age.
Online stores
I use quite a lot of different online stores and travelling apps like booking.com, Airbnb, airline companies etc. Usually, I use online stores to compare prices, experiences or searching an information of certain product. When I need to buy something, I’ll check online if the product is available at some store in my hometown and rather got it there because I want to support local brick-and-mortar stores. When ordering goods online I familiarize with all the information and comments of the store before ordering. I personally use only reliable online stores but if the store is new to me, I go through the following steps: I read terms and conditions, where it is located, other customer’s experiences, payment methods etc. And based on those I choose whether to trust it or not. I want to be sure that I will not lose my money. At this point of my life all my experiences have been excellent.
Smart Symptom Check (Älykäs hoidon tarpeen arvio)
I chose Smart Symptom Check because we use that all over our welfare district when estimating the patient need for treatment. You add the patient symptoms on it, and it will ask different questions and based on the answers it will give you the summary of symptoms, ICD-10 and ICPC 2 codes and suggestions whose appointment the patient should go. Then you copy the text and paste it on the patient’s medical record.
In my hometown this system is also used on the nurse’s chat. In this case a patient will log on the chat by using strong identification and fill the questions before chatting with the nurse. This has been a success and well-liked system.
Digitalization and Digital gap
Everything is digital and online nowadays. The speed of digitalization has forced people to adapt with the change. I personally like to do everything online but can’t be thinking of those people who don’t have the access on the internet, smart devices or electronic banking personal identify codes and how they will drop to the digital gap. Usually people like that are elders, with special needs or socially marginalized. And because of digitalization and services going online it’ll we impossible to them to take care of their daily business. Many services require to book an appointment time online, but how you’ll do it if you don’t have access to internet?
But we can’t generalize. For example, my grandfather is 90 years old, and he has a smart phone and uses digital services very well. Many elder people are widely aware of the digitalization and curious to use the services online.
Digital Competence test
Oh boy, there was a lot of questions! Not sure if I understood everything correctly but it gave interesting results. I got good points of safety and information. Got the lowest percentage of production but I guess that’s because I’m not that interested in how computers and websites work and how they are built of.
Self-evaluation
This assignment was interesting to do! It made me think of myself as a digi citizen and how big part the internet and digital services are in my life. As a millennial I have growth to use a digital service but also, I’ve been lucky to live a time before today’s digital world. But to be honest, I don’t think that that time would work anymore. Digitalization is the future, and we all need to adapt it when it will change and grow by the years. When reading other students posts I recognized that we all have very similar thoughts of digitalization.
I commended the following blogs:
Hi,
Your text is thought-provoking and makes me reflect on the “automatic processing of health data,” its benefits, and its security. It’s also nice to read about the experiences of elderly people who use modern services with interest.