I am a trained nurse and public health nurse and I have over 20 years of work experience in both primary healthcare and specialized medical care. Before entering the nursing field, I worked as a secretary for an export company that supplied building materials to the area of the former Soviet Union. Currently, I work at a university hospital, developing digital services for one of the hospital’s surgical departments.

The digitalization of the workplace has developed immensely during my career. I started my secretarial work by typing documents on an electric typewriter. A couple of years later, I began using a simple word processor. Gradually, desks were filled with large computers running the Windows 1985 software. The computers at the workstations were managed in large computer rooms with huge mainframes that served multiple workstations.

After graduating as a nurse in the early 2000s, I used an MS-DOS text-based interface in my work until we got a new graphical user interface. Patient information systems have evolved year by year, and the development has been remarkable compared to the interfaces at the beginning of my career. There is no longer a need to carry around folders full of patient records, nor is there even a need to print out papers. Everything is available electronically.

The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare is set to revolutionize the work processes in healthcare as well. Although artificial intelligence cannot fully replace humans in patient care, it can be used extensively as an assistant. AI can be utilized in communication, creating polite response messages to patients about, for example, laboratory results within seconds. AI can instantly generate summaries from patient record entries or listen to conversations between patients and doctors during consultations and create report entries, which the doctor then reviews and approves. AI can sift through massive amounts of medical imaging studies and highlight abnormal findings for human review. AI can also be used in education, for instance, it can create fictional patient stories for training purposes.

I have tried the ChatGPT AI service, and I find it incredible how it can respond to so many things and how quickly it responds. However, when interpreting the answers, it is always important to remember that AI can also respond incorrectly, so you should not blindly trust the answers it provides. One problem I see with the responses is that it is not possible to see the source on which the answer is based. So unlike when you Google, you cannot verify the reliability of the source.

An open digital society offers many advantages. It improves people’s opportunities to participate in societal activities, enables quick access to personal information, provides the possibility to handle matters electronically without leaving home, and allows for rapid interaction, even with a friend on the other side of the world. However, an open digital society also brings with it risks that are important to consider when developing services. Open digital environments also attract criminals, and a cyber-attack targeted at the digital environment can cause not only financial and operational damages but also significant human suffering. Due to its speed, an open digital environment can harm an individual or even an entire society in a short time as misleading or false information spreads rapidly to all users.

Especially in healthcare, patient data is critical information, and protecting it is extremely important. Managing these risks requires comprehensive measures, such as strong data protection laws, programs that promote digital literacy, regulations for the ethical use of technology, and international cooperation to enhance cybersecurity. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in May 2018. Its purpose was to strengthen individuals’ rights to control their own data. GDPR also significantly impacts the healthcare sector, compelling all operators to pay closer attention to the protection of patient data and personal information, as well as to the transparency of patient data processing.

SELF EVALUATION

In the first section of this course, I learned the basics of building a blog site and I look forward to learning more as the course progresses. The overall course seems interesting. Many of the digital services we are asked to explore in this course are already familiar to me, but the assignment forces us to look at these services in a different way than I would as a regular user.