In this era we are all part of the digitalization of all services. Present days I’m mostly using digital ways to take care of my social care benefits, making reservations to my doctor or hairdresser and shopping goods what I need. In digital way it is faster, easier and cheaper to handle my things via phone or computer.
During my adult life, I’ve been using several services from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (KELA). My first application to KELA was because of me moving alone to another city to study. From KELA I got financial support for my living as student aid. Student aid includes study grant, housing supplement and government guarantee for a student loan. After my studies I’ve needed KELA’s services with my eight week sick leave because of knee surgery. My employer paid me only for four weeks and the rest four weeks I had to apply sickness allowance. Today I am a mom of a one year old boy and I got financial support from KELA. KELA paid me parental allowance for six months and after that I get chlid home care allowance and chlid benefit. KELA pays me chlid home care allownace as long as my child is not going to municipal chlid care. Child benefit is paid as long as my boy turns 17 years old. I’ve get my European health care card when I was 15 years old but I applied one for my child. Applying of European health care card was super easy! Literally just 5 clicks and you are ready.
I’ve used OmaKanta a lot during my life. It is a good service for example checking laboratory results or doctors descriptions. Access to service happens via ”Suomi-identification”. It means you have to do strong identification to service for example with you bank identifiers. Accessing to OmaKanta is easy and fast. I can also handle my childs things in OmaKanta quite easily.
I was not enthusiastic about getting to know my retirement year and how much I’m gonna get money after that… I acces to Keva through ”Suomi-identification” again and it was as easy as getting to OmaKanta. When I tried to check my pension, Keva was not working and didn’t find my retirement information. I checked info from another service called tyoelake.fi. The service lead me to website of Varma. There I got my own information of my pension I’ve paid already. When I’m 67 years old my estimated pension is about 1876 €. This service didn’t allow me to check my pension under my retirement age.
When I shop online I prefer finnish e-shops. Some how I trust the product, prices and shipping more than foreign e-shops. Then I also support finnish workers and entrepreneurs. I’ve tried years ago order some stuff from eBay and Aliexpress but somehow I felt it to be too much and too hard for me. In those shops you can find everything you want but is it economical and environmentally friendly? No it isn’t if you ask from me. For me it is also hard to check is the shop is ”real” in AliExpress and check the shipping facts to Finland: how and how fast and which price the shipping is done. On the other hand I’ve used quite a lot booking.com and Trivago. Before Covid-19 I’ve used to travel and the easiest way to find best flights and hotels was to use such websites as booking.com and trivago. What I’ve noticed is that the prices changes compared the times you visit websites… And websites as booking.com are using intimidation like ”there is only one room left in this price” or ”100 visitors checked this hotel today, hurry up!”. It is important to notice that those intimidations are not real and are maid to people make quicker choices. For me e-shops are way to save money and buy stuff I need. It is easier to find product that fits the best and find the product to the lowest price.
As some of you may know I’m working as a radiographer in Terveystalo. That’s why I’m introducing you Terveystalo application. Application is for any patient who’s taking care of health in Terveystalo. Terveystalo app is a good platform for making reservations for doctors appoinments, using chat or video appointments with doctors and nurses and checking your results from laboratory etc. You can also pay all your appoinments and examinations via this app. I like the thing that everything can be done via one application. Layout is clear and easy to use. Identification can be done with bank identifiers. If you have Terveystalo as your occupational health or you are using Terveystalo as private patient I recommend to load this application!
Digital gap has been on my mind quite a lot lately. Few weeks ago my grandma needed to go to see eye specialist doctor and it is easiest way to go to optician’s. My grandma does not know how to use digital reservation system so she tried to call and get a time to the doctor. In this case instrumentarium (optician) have only general booking number. Before she got some real person to the phone she needed to select why she’s calling and where she would like to go. Well she is using smartphone and as we all know it’s not the easiest to select numbers during phone call. And actually she could not do it at her age of 87. At my opinion in these cases there need to be a number where you can call without selecting options first… Digital services and digitalisation is a good thing and it makes a lot of things easier. Still I think there need to be an other option for those who could not use digital devices. My grandma is lucky to have people around her for help but there is so many people who hasn’t got anyone and these people are unfortunately falling from our systems. :/ Digitalization has it’s limits cause we are only human.
I did the digital competence test and the results opened my eyes. I really thought I’m pretty good with digital skills but actually I’m just an average user. It is easy for me to use digital services but I don’t know how the services are built and I’m not paying attention to terms and conditions enough. Cyber security and safety are important for me but I could do so much more to improve it. This test was a wake up call for me and maybe from this day on I’m paiyng more attention to digital world. I’m not productive or innovative person so I’m not into creating something new in the digitalized world. I also want to keep my personal information for my self and not spreading it around social media. 😊
This task opened my eyes for more about how much things I do via digital services and also how poor my digital skills still are. Digitalization is everywhere and nowdays it is hard to mention a field where it is not used. Due to the digital competence test I’m gonna pay attention to services I use and cyber security like passwords etc. I haven’t noticed before that many services are using ”Suomi- identification”. Of course it is easy way to get personal data for services use.
I left comments to next three articles:
Hello Anni. You wrote about how difficult your grandparent found to make a phone call to get an appointment with a opthalmologist. She had to navigate by choosing different numbers. Some private healthcare providers use call centers to help with phone calls. Navigating may be difficult for elderly. Elderly people probably have problems with their vision and they should have to see well enough to choose the right number on their phones. And handling the phone may be difficult, also.
Thank you Anni for your blog!
I enjoyed reading your personal anecdotes and experiences of the different services. I totally recognize the feeling not wanting to check the pension age and sum! 😀
Hi anni!
It was interesting read your blog. You have written comprehensively of this topic. In my blog I also write difficulties which elderly people can have with digitalized services. It’s not always easy to learn use new technology.
Competence wheel woke up many thoughts in my mind. I thought I’m pretty good to use technology, but results told me I need more practicing. It’s so important to keep your information safe and secured in this digitalized world
“There is only one room left in this price” or ”100 visitors checked this hotel today, hurry up!”
These are so annoying! They can’t possibly be true because almost every hotel page has the same sentences. But they do create feelings of urgency and panic, even if you don’t believe in them. Maybe that’s the point.
I personally like to look at the hotel’s (and airlines’) own websites to see if you can get the services there for the same price. If the price is the same, I’d rather order from the hotel’s own website. This works well, at least in Finnish hotels. 🙂
Great insights about the topic! I could relate to many of your thoughts.
I have not tried AliExpress either, but am sometimes wondering how people need so much stuff. And I totally agree with you that it can’t be too economically friendly either. What you write about booking.com is very true: one should be aware of the fact that they use these simple tricks and try to get people to book and act immediately.
Terveystalo application seems to be a good one! I have not tried it myself, but it sounds exactly how the health service applications should work, but many are not there yet.
I have similar kind of experiences about people who are not able to use all the latest digital services. The gap between people is just growing, and it’s worrying me. In worst case people do not get the necessary health service because they don’t know how to reach the provider. In this digitalised world we should not forget people living in it.
Hi Anni. Applications that help everyday life are good and better if they work. I haven’t needed the application you mentioned, but you make it sound that it works and has proven it’s value for the enterprise you work for. It’s common to evaluate your own skills better than they truly are. I got similar assesment from the digital competence test. It got thinking the same questions that you mentioned.
Digitalization is the key for more data, but is more data good for everyone. Corporates love digitalization and the big data it provides. I think that digitalization has taken big leaps, that may come as too big leaps when we look the dcisions that has been made after roughly 20 years from now.
https://blogi.savonia.fi/tomips/digi-citizen/