Experiences of the digitalisation in my own field
When I started to work in health care as a practical nurse, we write down patient daily care on the paper, not in the patient information systems. That was ten years ago. Today I work in the Virtual Home Care and safety service in home care, as a Service Supervisor. We have multiple different programs in use. In the patient care we have patient information system, operational control system and video call –program. We also have other programs like; email, teams, shift planning-program etc.
Today home care sector has lots of technology solutions and I think that there are more coming in the future. Patients have in their home for example electric lock, safety wrist and door alarm. Some of our customers / patients can live by their own without physical help because they have some technology solution in their home. Technology solutions can help our customers to have independent life, usually technology solutions bring safety to their everyday life. Some of them also need home care visit, the visit can be virtual or traditional home care. Technology solutions is not an answer for everything, but it will help home care employees and our patients.
I have noticed that there are suspicious or doubts about technology solution in home care. I think elderly people are very open to try different solutions and results have been good. I think we must use more time to educate our employees to understand technology solutions; how technology works, what is the impact or benefits, how technology solutions will help them work.
In the future we must use programs more efficiently. I mean that we should take advantage of all the features in the programs. Sometimes we take a new program or device before we have advantaged old devices or programs’ entirely. I think there are also too many different programs which don´t support each other. I think we need more integrations between programs. There is too much manual work. Manual work can cause mistakes or there can be some double work.
Risk of open digital society
More and more we must think about security and cyber security. In health care there are different laws to guide our work. For example, data protection, decree patient document and law on patient status and rights. I understand that people are thinking about their patient data, is the data in safe place. There have been also cases in Finland where patients’ data has been hacked. But we must think also about our own security. Data will be collected all the time. There are giant amounts of information on the internet of all of us. Do we really understand that? Are our passwords safe enough? Do we use different passwords? Do we read all the detail and conditions what are in the contract? We know all those questions, but are we doing something about them?
My self evaluation
I think this section was good opening to digitalized work environment. I think everyone must think these topics regularly. When I am working, I am very careful with patient data and security. But in spare time I need more attention about how I use different apps, how I think about safety, data etc. This was good reminder.
Comments:
Anna-Liisa Voutilainen, AMiinus: DIGI SOCIETY | AMiinius (savonia.fi)
Heini´s site, Heini Lehtonen: DIGI SOCIETY – Heini’s site (savonia.fi)