My own experiences
I have worked as a nurse for the last 6 years. During these years I have witnessed digitalization become a part of healthcare sector. I worked in surgery unit for a few years and during that time my ward moved from writing on paper to using a digital patient information system. It was interesting being a part of this transition in both good and bad. Digitalization helped me to do my job more efficiently but its challenges also made my work more difficult from time to time. Digitalization is not without risk. What I have learned in my own experience is that employees must be well trained before any kind of digital transition. In my opinion education is key to making transition smoother for everyone. It also decreases risks of digitalization.
Teemu Arina (2020) has envisioned that in the future nurses will take care of robots instead of patients. So how we will teach future healthcare students to take care of both robots and patients? Technology includes risks and it can fail so nurses have to know what to do without technology’s help. Overall digitalization will make a big change in the future healthcare sector. This means that our employees must change too. We have to re-organize our schooling system to support both new students and current professionals in moving towards working life with digitalization. I think that we don’t know how to do this right now as we can’t be sure how healthcare system will change in the future.
The risks of open digital society
Ministry of finance Finland has set the goals for digitalization which include creating competitive operational environment for businesses and upgrading Finland to one of the top countries in the field of digitalization. This means investments in cyber and information security. (Ministry of finance Finland, unknown publication.) Cyber and information security is crucial in healthcare too, so with these goals we will see benefits in healthcare sector as well.
The enforcement of the data protection regulation has brought more awareness of information security to every sector. In healthcare sector it has modified our working habits and environment into being more secure. Awareness of information security has also increased among customers and patients. I see more and more people asking about information security and being interested in owning their own data. I think this is a good path towards the future as the importance of digitalization will increase in healthcare sector. Digital evolution will bring more risks so if we internalize information security now it will be much easier to keep it up in the future.
Chat GPT and artifical intelligence
I want to start this assigment with a story about my work. I work in ophthalmopathy and specifically in the surgery ward. In cataract surgery we replace patient’s own lens with a synthetic lens. Before operation doctor must calculate, which diopter lens to choose. We of course have equipment which makes the analysis, but doctors have to make conclusions from the analysis and consider patient’s background and wishes. One day we spoke about artifical intelligence and a doctor tried to ask Chat GPT what lens we should pick for a particular patient. Chat GPT could give pretty good guidelines but couldn’t choose exactly which lens to pick. My conclusion from that was that maybe artifical intelligence doesn’t want to be in charge of making decisions, it only guides you to make your own.
I asked Chat GPT what is nursing and was surprised that the answer was so extensive and detailed. I expected something more general. I kept going and asked about work in surgery unit. The answer was more global, but overall it fits my own work area very well. Then I asked more detailed question about medications during operation and anesthesia. It could tell the right points about those drugs and how to make decions which drug to choose. My conclusion from this is that artifical intelligence can make its own summary from different sources and from that give you guidelines to help you make your own decions.
Self evaluation
This assigment area was interesting. Reading what others have written in this assigments was informative and made me think of my own field more extensively. It is also always interesting to play with ideas about the future especially in the field of digitalization because it sounds almost like science fiction when you think possibilites for example with robots. This was also my first time using Chat GPT and it was amazing how good responses I got. Maybe in the future I will use this kind artifical intelligence more with my work and school.
Sources:
Arina Teemu 2020. HyTeLab-hanke. Youtube video platform. Published 14.10.2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rzSq_h7pWw . Referenced 10.6.2024.
Ministry of finance Finland, unknown publication. Digitalization – Recovery and resilience plan. Internet publication. https://vm.fi/en/digitalisation-rrf. Referenced 10.6.2024.
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