The Social insurance Institution of Finland (KELA) is a quite familiar for me. Currently i am allowed to student’s health care since i am student, so i am paying health care fee. In addition, every two years KELA compensates some of the dental care fees. In the past, i have received a student financial aid and a housing allowance and also an unemployment benefit at some point. Also, KELA has gave compensation for medicines and physiotherapy fees. I had heard about European health care card before, but i haven’t really paid attention to it, or studied what it actually means. It does sound useful – and i did order the card now.
I accessed to the OmaKanta via mobile authentication. In OmaKanta people can see their health information and some social service information. Through OmaKanta service it is possible for example to renew some medicine recipes and to see laboratory results. I do not use OmaKanta really that often, but it is handy to see your doctor visits etc. in one place. As of now, November 2024, there seems to be an ongoing updates. In the future the visual appearance and functionality is promised to be better and smoother, also the accessibility of the online service will be improved. I tried briefly the new site, visually it looks better but all the functions are not available yet.
From Keva’s site, it’s possible to see for example how much you have currently accumulated pension and how much it would be when is the time for the retirement. My earliest retirement age is 68. I would get approximately 2100e in a month, which doesn’t sound that bad, even though, the retirement age does. The accumulated pension is actually a surprise considering all the negative news around future pensions like low birth rates and public finances. But on the other hand, i have to work quite a long time and in that time many things can change.
Digital stores and comparasions
I do some shopping digitally; like books, clothes and electronics. I favor a domestic operators and shops. I did some research for the prices in Amazon and eBay and compared them to the local shops. I chose for example the TV LG oled 55’’. The prices are pretty much the same in the Amazon. In eBay there are some cheaper options, but i am not feeling that confident with the sellers. At glance, everything looks okayish; there are information where the shop and product is located, estimated delivery time etc. but for example, this one seller, does not accept returns at all. Also, when buying something big, especially from abroad, the delivery fee could be a quite high and also there are customs, which should be take into consideration. Personally, i don’t really want to order anything from Amazon nor eBay, if i don’t really have to. Overall ordering something big from abroad isn’t really wise at all in my opinion, if just it is available locally.
Trivago and Booking.com are somewhat familiar sites. I think, i have used Booking.com once for actually ordering the accommodation. But both services, and other somewhat similar services (like AirBnb, which is more by private providers), are familiar to the some extent. Services like Booking.com and Trivago are in my opinion quite safe to use, but for example Trivago’s scam potentiality is a bit higher. Trivago directs you to the actual, external, booking site if you want to make the reservation. So Trivago itself is just mainly comparing the prices, services and other features. With both Trivago and Booking.com, it is easy to find the cheapest hotel, see the location in the map, read what others had said about it, see what are the most popular places and add service filters, like bed & breakfast etc. In general the sites are safe, but i would usually to be sure about it, so i would go to the actual website of the hotel, or other accommodation, check the details there and maybe do the actual reservation from there – if the price difference isn’t really that big. At least this way the possibility to fall a victim of a scam is really minimized, if you really want to be sure about that.
Service from environmental health field
I chose oivahymy.fi as a service from my own field. I chose it because it’s a service which is available for everybody and it is easy to use. It gives all customers the possibility to see the state of hygiene in different food services, which might have an effect to their health. So, through oivahymy.fi customers can see the summary of the food inspection report of the operator. When inspector does the inspection, there are dozens of points to look and to review, from different logs like temperature and appropriate cooling to cleanliness of surfaces and tools etc. It also depends what kind of place it is in question; for example, in shop with just a packaged food it is not possible to review all the same things as it is in restaurant for example.
I think the oivahymy service is really easy to use. When customer knows the name or even part of it, they can find it through the search. After that, they can open the summary page and see how the placed was reviewed. Customers can see the last three summaries of the reports. There are four possible ratings – which can be seen in the report page – excellent, good, to be corrected and bad. Main rating is determined by the lowest score which was given out of all the points checked, even if it is just one point, example, of 25 points. From customers point of view service is helpful, but from the operator point of view it might feel unfair, that the results are available for the public.
In overall, my user experience with the service is that it’s helpful, simple and it gives valid information. The data of the summary page is from the the national information system (by Ruokavirasto and Valvira), where the report is made by environmental health inspectors, which i briefly wrote in ”Digi society” page.
Digitalization and digital gap
People who do not have a bank credentials, like some elderly people, might have problems to access to certain services, like OmaKanta. This could make many things harder, if for example laboratory results are going there. These people rely more on call times and maybe visiting physically in the place, for example in the bank. Handling all the information – at least personally to me – is easier through digitalized services, compared to that you’d have all things on the paper. When using old habits, you should also have the physical space for them and archive them somewhat wisely.
Also a lot of different events are announced in the social media pages. So people who are ”offline” might miss out some things they actually are interested in. These people might be harder to reach and vice versa, for them it is harder to reach another people. For some, it might increase the risk of social exclusion. Also socially vulnerable people have more problems in using digital technologies and gain benefits they offer (source), so it could even cause a vicious circle. People, especially elderly people, needs enough education about digital services and technologies for better understanding of them.
The Digital Competence Test
I did the Digital Competence Test. Most of the things addressed in the test are at least somewhat familiar for me. But some areas, like for example that about programming languages are a bit foreign, and production and communication areas might need some improvement too. Information and safety areas were the most familiar according to the test. In general, i feel confident about my digital competence, but i think that the digital field is developing so fast, that it is important to be up to date of all the new technologies, to not be left behind in this field.
Self reflection
Majority of the services involved this assignment were fairly familiar, some more than others. Probably Keva’s site was the most unfamiliar, i have visited there only once before this. This time i also experimented with a different salaries; how they effects to the pension which was interesting to see. Also, if i leave for a part-time retirement before the actual age – how that affects them.
Although European health care card was namely familiar, it was just now when i actually read more about it and it sounded handy. The Digital Competence Test was completely a new test for me. It gives a nice insight to which areas in digital sector still needs some work. As a whole, i would say that as we are living in a digitalisizing world, it is important to be ready to adopt a new and different digital solutions, for a smoother and time-saving customer experience and service.
I commented:
Veli-Matti I Lehtinensays:
Hello,
thank you for your interesting thoughts. I agree with you, that especially elder people living in a rural areas have problems with digitalization. So they often rely on a help of others. When they can’t and don’t use online services, i think it is also much harder to be proactive what comes to the health. I am referring to the Terveyskylä service which is, in right hands especially, very relevant and useful service for everybody like you wrote. It is interesting to see if there is some more development for Terveyskylä, for example taking more advantage of artificial intelligence.
https://blogi.savonia.fi/lehtinenvm/
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Veli-Matti I Lehtinen
Awaiting moderation
Hi,
it’s good to bring up perspective, that living in a small town it is not possible neccessary to get everything people want. Then online shopping is a handy option and you don’t have to travel to next bigger city. Same thing would apply to about mental health services what you wrote, about stigma, so it is important you brought mielenterveystalo.fi sercive up in your post.
https://blogi.savonia.fi/lehtinenvm/
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Veli-Matti I Lehtinen says:
Hi, you have a good point that we are often forced to use certain digital services and we give a lot of information about ourselves. Sometimes i think that i would like to be without smartphone and i could use just a computer for everything needed. Even that would be a possible it would, in my opinion, also make things harder and slower since it is so normal now use smartphone for most tasks. I do really like your support for local shops, favoring them is valuable especially for smaller business owners.
https://blogi.savonia.fi/lehtinenvm/