My experiences of the digitalization
I was born in 1981 and it feels incredible to think that the computers and the internet weren’t a part of our everyday life back then. We used computers to play computer games and later to email and surf in the internet. The computers were quite big and the internet slow. I remember that when you used the internet, no one could call by phone (landline) at the same time. Oh my, it feels so weird! In my childhood or adolescence we spent our free-time by going out with friends and communicate with them in real life – not via computers. I’m actually quite concerned of our youth, because they are doing absolutely everything by using their mobile devices.
I work in the health care, where the Covid pandemic changed the whole way of working and taking care of patients. We had to create new ways of meeting patients, because only few wanted to come to the health station. Also the staff started to work remotely and the change happened just in days. We had to make sure that everyone who needed health care, could have it safely. The digital health care services were developed rapidly and hindsight the pandemic was a good push to digitalization. Nowadays working remotely is very common likewise communicating with your team online i.e. via Microsoft Teams. My team members are working all over Finland and actually it doesn’t feel like it at all – we communicate so actively during the working day.
There are many digital applications that increase the self-care and decrease the need of the health care services. In the future, there will be many kinds of the health applications that help individuals to take care of themselves instead of calling or visiting the health center, I think. In my opinion, the health care services should be rationalized in many ways so that everyone have an equal possibility to take care of their health. The digital services should be the first option to those, who can use them, so that the resources can be rationalized. In the future there will be robotics used and processes will be automatized. Also the science will take enormous steps of diagnosing serious diseases and even prevent them. The development goes so rapidly that we even can’t imagine, what kind of ways of treating people there are in the future.
Risks of open digital society
Even though the digitalization opens us new ways of working and communicating, there are many risks and threats in the digitalized world. I consider the data protect is one of the greatest. Every time you use the internet, you are in a high risk of losing your personal data. Also every time you click any settings or warnings on the internet site, the browser can – and will – collect some data of you and may have an access to your computer and files. We may actually don’t have even an idea of what kind of information i.e. our cellular phones collect from us. We have so much trust on our mobile devices and cannot even think about the risk that may stalk us. There are huge risks to lose some important and sensitive data via open network. I think that too many common people trust the websites too much and don’t even think how dangerous some of them can be.
GDPR
General data protection regulation (GDPR) was adopted in 2016 and entered into application in 2018. It changed working in many good ways. It ensures that you have more control of your personal data and improves the data protection. I remember, when the GDPR entered into application in 2018, we had to make some changes in our working place; it wasn’t – and isn’t – allowed to collect any lists of names or information anymore, or save any data of anyone in your computer hard disc. I think the GDPR is a good thing both in my personal and professional point of view. As a consumer I can be sure that my personal data is kept safe. As a professional I can assure the patients that their personal data is kept safe. In my opinion, the GDPR brought only positive things.
Self evaluation
The videos linked in the material were very interesting and the most interesting video was about the data protection. I’m aware of data protection but even so I know I could be more careful when using the internet. Actually I’m a bit frightened, how there are so many different ways to collect data from me and my life. We have to be very careful of what we publish in the social media, because there can be many kind of threats that we even cannot imagine. I think that if you use the internet or social media, or even the smart phone, you cannot be 100% safe.
Articles I commented on (I linked these afterwards, because I didn’t know that they should be linked here. That’s why I’m a bit insecure if I left a comment precisely on Elina’s site – the comment hasn’t published yet.)