My own experiences and future ideas on the development of digitalization in occupational healthcare

Over the past ten years, the development of digitalization has been rapid in my own field of occupational healthcare. When I started my career as an occupational healthcare nurse in 2012, some patient data was still archived in paper form. Gradually, paper archives were abandoned and a transition was made to fully electronic patient information systems. This marked the beginning of the rapid development of digitalization. We began to receive electronic data on the number and causes of sick leave in companies to plan and support preventive work, and this data allowed us to start allocating the right kind of support to workplaces to promote well-being at work. Since then, the pace of development of digitalization has been tremendous, and today we can receive and monitor dozens of different data contents in real time in our work. Remote services have become part of our everyday lives, electronic systems analyze and assess the need for treatment based on the client’s symptom profile, and services can be targeted in a timely manner and to the right specialist, in order to avoid transferring the client from one specialist to another. I believe that in the future, more artificial intelligence-based tools will be developed in occupational healthcare for use by specialists, including to support written work; a speech recognition tool, for example, could be a good development direction. We could utilize this as a recording support tool when conducting extensive workplace surveys in companies. I believe that in the future, digitalization will facilitate and speed up our work in occupational healthcare, especially in producing written documents and making patient records.

Risks of an open digital society

As digitalization develops, I myself have become more aware of data protection issues in my own personal life as an adult. In the open society in which we live, privacy and data security are major challenges. I think that the entry into force of the EU General Data Protection Regulation has also brought clarity to data protection issues, but also obligations that need to be taken into account. In my own work in the healthcare sector, I think the GDPR has contributed to the development of internal data protection guidelines at our workplace. At our workplace, everyone is now required to complete annual data protection training, which aims to ensure that every employee understands what it means and can act according to the instructions in their work. Our workplace also has a data security department, which is responsible for updating these guidelines and from whom you can always ask for advice if you have any questions about data protection. In occupational healthcare, I think that precise guidelines have only been an advantage, because we work in cooperation with both the employees of client companies and the company management. Data protection guidelines also help us to explain to the management of client companies why we can only give them certain information so that patient safety is not compromised.
I do not recognize any negative things about this reform in my own work.

Artificial intelligence

I asked Chat GPT two questions. The first question I asked was “what does an occupational health nurse’s job description include?” The AI ​​was able to list the main contents related to the occupational health nurse’s job description. The occupational health nurse’s job description is extensive and focuses particularly on promoting the health of working-age people and supporting their ability to work. An occupational health nurse often works as part of a multidisciplinary occupational health care team (doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists, etc.) and works closely with employers and employees. The AI ​​was also able to expand on the above-mentioned issues.

As a second question, I asked the AI ​​“how will the work of an occupational health nurse develop in the coming years in terms of digitalization?” The answers to this question were in line with what has already been developed at our workplace for several years. Such as remote appointments and digital health checks, artificial intelligence and analytics as decision support, mobile applications and self-service channels, automation and digital tools in administration, the changing role of occupational health nurses and emphasizing expertise, collaboration and communication on digital platforms. I did not get any new ideas or perspectives from artificial intelligence in this regard.

I think that artificial intelligence is a good thing if its user remembers to critically examine the results it produces and, if necessary, search for researched information from different data sources to support the data produced by artificial intelligence.

Self-assessment
I think this task was a good reminder of the importance of data protection issues and the scope of this topic area. As digitalization develops, the employer’s responsibility for training and keeping employees up to date is also emphasized even more. Through this task, I learned to better utilize artificial intelligence in searching for general information.

I commented on two blogs: Anna Lehtiniemi and Outi Hemmilä.