Kela & Omakanta & Varma
KELA is Finland’s Social Insurance Institution, and it is handling assistance to the people in different phases of life. For myself the recent actions done in Kela’s e-portal have been related to my children and their daycare payments. Omakanta is an online service which provides health information for yourself, your children and for someone you are taking care of. The service can be accessed anywhere and anytime. I usually use the service to read treatment related records or laboratory tests. KELA and Omakanta require a multi-factor-signup to get access to personal records. I used online banking codes for signup, but other signup methods are available as well. I also explored the service Varma is providing to its customers, and I could find information about my pension right now and also estimates towards the future.
E-shops
E-shops are extremely versatile and advanced if you would like to get a better variety of products and maybe also a better price for the product. It is always good to check the webshop related to terms and conditions, for example in case of reclamation or return. When you explore the prices for products in different shops, you can find both really cheap and similar prices compared to the Finnish market.
It is also good to remember that if purchasing a product that requires maintenance or training, most likely those services are not included in the purchase price. An evaluation should be done before going to a foreign provider as it’s sometimes easier to go to the local store to get everything sorted out with the customer service team. Booking a hotel through ebookers can be cheaper than on the hotels own website but the customer should also think about whether they want to pay a little more to the hotel straight knowing the hotel company will get all of the payment straight there, or work with an external provider that takes some part of the price to themselves. When working with e-shops it is good to consider the environment and the impact the shipments and possible returns might have. All in all, a competitive market is a good thing to get more versatility and decent prices, but we as consumers need to have some evaluation in order to make the right choices that contribute to our own personal values.
Dental e-shops
For dental professionals there are multiple different e-shops available locally and globally. My understanding is that these webshops are working fairly well, especially for routine purchases. Anytime there is a need for a more detailed service, for example finding out the right colour for a certain material, then a webshop itself is not enough. The shops might have e-chats with bots available but usually those cannot service you in a professional way. In these cases, you mainly have to write an email or call customer service. In cases when working with medical devices you need to take extra care that you are purchasing goods that apply to MDR. The webshop should have easy links to the item’s instructions for use and also to applicable declarations.
Digital gaps
For a person that is not familiar with digital services I think firstly the services need to be designed and programmed in a customer friendly way to ensure the usability is on a good level. The training and ongoing learning needs to be inbuild to the systems, so that users can easily give feedback on the features and workflows. The good thing about digital platforms is that they evolve rapidly so the feedback from the users can be adapted to use quickly. Actually, for medical devices for example, it is a necessity to adapt the products based on the customer feedback and this is easy to give in online platforms.
There will be a need for assistance in using the digital ways and society should provide help in using these services. The help can be for example guidance in a local library in digital skills for elderly or creating ways in which care takers can access the systems on behalf of the person if needed. People without access to computers or digital devices need to be addressed as well. We might come across also opinions and preferences that don’t support the digital approach. In these situations, time and a clear view of the benefits in digital formats needs to be clarified. We cannot just create digital options because they are digital – there always needs to be a purpose and benefit for the real users to switch from analog to digital. New generations that grow up to totally digi native, will on the other demand the easy access and availability of digital services. This creates demand for high-quality, easy-to-use services that can effectively do the assignments needed.
Competence test
The digital competence test did not include a lot of surprises to me, but communication and production were the weakest areas for me. Regarding production I left thinking if programming skills is a must for everyone in society. Of course, some basics are good to know, but I realized I’m not that familiar with the programming codes yet. Active participation in digital formats is also not a strength for me, I think because of the personal evaluation of privacy. I think this is a really important task to learn in the digital world to find the right ways to be part of communities and not be left out.
Self-evaluation
These assignments felt quite natural to me, and it was a good way actually to evaluate the digital skills with the competence test. We cannot be experts on each of the aspects but we all should know some basics about the different areas. The main learning was that all in all, we have a lot of services and information in the digital format and that the digital services need to be usable for all different user groups. It is also a necessity to maintain a critical mindset when applying digital services to daily tasks.