CTRL + ALT + ePLATFORMS
Digital tools and social media platforms are no longer used only during free time or for entertainment. Over the years, they have become an essential part of modern working life, communication, collaboration and productivity. Especially in healthcare and ICT environments, digital applications play a major role in enabling secure communication, efficient workflows, masterful project handling and access to information.
In my current role, I work in an in-house ICMT organization where my responsibility is to maintain and develop secure shared mobile devices used in hospital environments. These devices contain healthcare applications that process sensitive patient information and integrate with electronic health record (EHR) systems. My work focuses heavily on security, usability, device management and ensuring that configurations such as MDM (Mobile Device Management) and VPN connections function correctly and securely. There are a lot of project working in my role.
Because of this, digital tools are a natural part of my everyday work. At the same time, working in healthcare technology has made me think more critically about security, communication, usability and the role digital platforms have in professional environments.
ePLATFORMS x Daily work
In my daily work, several digital tools are used continuously for communication, organization, documentation and technical management.
Microsoft Teams
Teams is probably the most important communication platform in my work. It is used for:
- Meetings (Internal and external)
- Project communication
- Quick messaging
- Screen sharing
- Collaboration between different teams
Without Teams, remote and hybrid work would be much more difficult. It allows quick communication and reduces the need for emails in many situations.
Outlook
Outlook remains the official communication channel for:
- Formal communication
- Meeting invitations
- Customer communication
Even though instant messaging has become more common, email is still essential in healthcare ICT environments where traceability and documentation are important.
Microsoft 365 Applications
Applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are used daily. Documentation, reporting, presentations and tracking tasks would be difficult without them. I do a lot of documentation in my current role where word is the nr.1 tool to go. Excel is the best software to make different kind of calculator, e.g. I have two cells that contain mobile device amount and on other cell I have the amount of users. When I change these values, excel refers to hard coded cells to give me an overview of how many working hours we need to enroll and deliver these devices. Powerpoint is used to make project presentation etc.
Copilot
One of the newest tools I use regularly is Microsoft Copilot. I use it for:
- Brainstorming
- Summarizing information
- Improving texts
- Organizing ideas
- Finding information from large amounts of documentation
Our organization uses Copilot license for organizations. This means, that we have secure internal Copilot to use and have access to internal documentation. Copilot has significantly improved productivity in many tasks. However, I still verify the information manually, especially when working with technical or security-related matters.
draw.io
Draw.io is a very useful tool for visualizing:
- Network structures
- Workflows
- Integrations
- System architectures
In technical environments, visual documentation often explains things much more clearly than plain text. Draw.io is great and free application to handle different kind of visualization work I need to have in my current role
Atlassian Jira & Confluence
Jira is one of the main tools used in my daily work for project and task management. It is especially useful in ICT environments where multiple projects, development tasks, incidents and change requests are handled simultaneously. I use Jira mainly in these tasks:
- Tracking development tasks
- Reporting issues and bugs
- Managing project workflows
- Documenting changes and updates
- Following sprint progress
Confluence is mainly used as a documentation and knowledge-sharing platform. In healthcare ICT environments, documentation is extremely important, especially when systems involve integrations, security configurations and technical instructions. Confluence is used for:
- Creating technical documentation
- Maintaining instructions and guides
- Documenting configurations and processes
- Sharing knowledge between teams
- Storing project-related information
New digital tools to help working more efficiently
For this assignment, I explored the list and there were multiple potentially valuable tools to enhance my workflows. I chose five that I found the most interesting.
Slack
Slack is a communication and collaboration platform often compared to Microsoft Teams. It allows organized communication through channels, integrations and automation tools.
Possible use in my work:
Slack could improve communication between technical teams, especially in fast-moving projects or incident management situations.
Positive sides:
- Fast communication
- Easy integrations
- Organized discussions
- Negative sides:
- Can create information overload
- Another communication platform alongside Teams may increase complexity
Why I chose it:
Slack is widely used in ICT organizations globally, so understanding its functionality is useful professionally. I know that some of our dev customers use it.
Miro
Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard platform used for brainstorming, workshops and planning.
Possible use in my work:
- Mobile workflows
- Healthcare processes
- Device ecosystems
- Project planning
Why I chose it:
Healthcare ICT projects often involve multiple stakeholders and visual collaboration tools could improve communication significantly.
DeepL
DeepL is an AI-powered translation tool.
Possible use in my work:
- English documentation
- International vendors
- Multilingual communication
Why I chose it:
Translation quality is increasingly important in international digital environments. Copilot handles translation flawlessly so the use of DeepL could be a kind of second option to do this. Maybe to compare translations of copilot and DeepL and combine from these both into one “master” translation.
Todoist
Todoist is a task and productivity management application.
Possible use in my work:
- Technical tasks
- Device configurations
- Project timelines
- Reminders
Why I chose it:
Modern ICT work includes many parallel tasks and effective prioritization is important. Partly this is handled via Jira already, but for personal tasks and reminders I now use outlook (making own meetings with agenda what needs to be done)
Asana
Asana is a project management and collaboration platform designed to help teams organize tasks, workflows and projects efficiently.
Possible use in my work:
- tracking deployment projects
- managing device rollout schedules
- coordinating development tasks
- following incident resolution progress
- organizing teamwork between technical and clinical stakeholders
Why I chose it:
My work includes multiple parallel projects and technical tasks, so structured project management tools are important. Even though we currently use Jira heavily, Asana could provide a more simplified and user-friendly approach for certain types of collaboration and project coordination.
Tl;dr of these five new digital tools
These five new digital tools make quite a well-rounded ensemble of tools to use in daily work:
- Slack → communication
- Miro → collaboration/visual planning
- DeepL → translation/productivity
- Todoist → personal organization
- Asana → project management
Self-Reflection
This assignment made me think more broadly about the role digital platforms and social media tools have in modern working life. Even though I already use digital tools constantly, I realized how many different types of platforms exist for communication, collaboration, organization and productivity.
Working in healthcare ICT has also made me more aware of the importance of balancing usability and security. It is easy to introduce new digital tools, but ensuring they are secure, practical and genuinely useful is much more challenging.
I also noticed that many social media and productivity platforms overlap in functionality. Organizations must carefully consider whether new tools truly improve workflows or simply increase complexity and information overload. For example we had a pilot of Copilot license before going live to make sure that it really helps and improves our workflows.
Overall, this assignment strengthened my understanding of how digital platforms support modern work environments and how important continuous learning is in rapidly evolving digital ecosystems. In the future, I would like to learn more about secure AI solutions, workflow automation and user-centered design in healthcare technology.